Black Pain

Black Pain by Alexander Igishev The title in Russian plays on the word “Chernobyl“, which means “Black stem“. The short film by the Soviet director, documentarist, Chernobyl liquidator, and a real Human, Alexander Igishev. Black Pain was filmed in 1987 in Pripyat at his own initiative. It was only after the reel got international approval that Odessa film studio, where he worked as a director at the time, started listing the film as its own. The film combines documentary footage from Pripyat with scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker“, that was created 8 years before the disaster. At the end of the film, one can hear recital of the New Testament, Book of Revelations (6 : 12-17). The word “Chernobyl“, in addition to the literal meaning of “black stem“, is also the name of a grass - wormwood. The “Star of Wormwood“ is an image from Revelations (8 : 11), referring to a star that shall fall upon the Earth and make the drinking water bitter, poison it. Alexander Igishev’s works ... Source: Beorn and The Shieldmaiden