Query on Chernobyl

[Ruder, Cynthia A]

Dear SEELANGtsy:

Below please find a query I received from an independent filmmaker/journalist regarding Chernobyl.  Please address any suggestions or information DIRECTLY TO HIM:  Jesse Dukes  at jpdukes at gmail.com<mailto:jpdukes at gmail.com>.  Thank you in advance for any help you can lend.

Best, Cindy Ruder

Here begins the quoted message:
 I'm collaborating with photographer Maisie Crow on a multimedia documentary on Slavutych, the small city that was built to house the population of Pripyat after the Chernobyl meltdown. To tell the story of Slavutych's founding, we need to reference the disaster. We are using interviews of people's memories of that day, but to accompany the interview, we wanted to create images of newspaper headlines and articles about Chernobyl. Some of these could be the American or other English newspapers, but we also would like to find the lead stories from Ukrainian, Belorussian, or Soviet newspapers reporting on the accident or the subsequent events. Microfiche or Microfilm would be ok, but to render the effect we're hoping for, we would want actual positive images of the papers themselves. That would mean either taking photos of actual papers, or using full color image scans.

So a couple of questions:

Would you recommend any specific Soviet era Newspapers or sources?

Where might we find them? Online resources are obviously super convenient. However, I have access to the University of Virginia library system, and Maisie has access to Columbia University's library.

Do you happen to know whether using an image of a newspapers headline or front page for a documentary violates copyright law? My understanding is that it probably falls under the Fair Use provision--that the text of a newspaper is protected by copyright, but not the image of the paper itself.


Also, we have found some public domain archival footage of the immediate cleanup Chernobyl. Do you know where we might locate other video or audio from news reports or other sources set at the time of the accident?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Jesse Dukes
Independent Journalist
Radio Print Multimedia
jpdukes at gmail.com<mailto:jpdukes at gmail.com>
Cynthia A. Ruder, Associate Professor
University of Kentucky
MCL/Russian & Eastern Studies
1055 Patterson
Lexington, KY  40506-0027
859.257.7026
cynthia.ruder at uky.edu<mailto:cynthia.ruder at uky.edu>

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