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MSU student wins Fulbright to make film about Soviet nuclear test site
August 12, 2005 -- Carol Schmidt
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| MSU grad student Anne Devereux has won a prestigious Fulbright award to make a film about the former Soviet nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan. |
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Bozeman - A graduate student in Montana State University's Science and Natural History Filmmaking program has won a Fulbright to make a documentary film in Kazakhstan about a former Soviet atomic testing site and the effects of nuclear proliferation.
Anne Devereux, 33, a native of Pasadena, Calif., will use a Fulbright graduate research grant to make an hour-long film that will examine the nuclear legacy and current status of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. The site is an 11,000 sq.-mile-area on the isolated steppe of Kazakhstan where the former U.S.S.R. developed and tested its nuclear weapons. Devereux will travel to Kazakhstan at the first of the year and will live and work in the country for six-months, working as a visiting scholar at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Almaty.
"I'm humbled and honored by the Fulbright selection and the opportunity to tell the Kazakh's story," Devereux said.
The seed for Devereux's idea came nearly two years ago when award-winning journalist Richard Stone, European news editor for the journal "Science," spoke to the students in MSU's Science and Natural History Filmmaking program about his writing experiences in the former Soviet countries. Devereux said she was immediately drawn to story of the Semipalatinsk Test Site because it was integral to the Cold War and is still considered to be a proliferation threat. The Soviet's conducted 456 nuclear tests during the site's 40 years of operation.
"From my point of view, this is an undocumented piece of the nuclear history pie," Devereux said. While the president of Kazakhstan disarmed the site, it is so isolated that few in the outside world know much about it. "I thought it was a story worthy of a thesis film."
She spoke to Stone after class and a friendship developed. Stone, who taught journalism in Kazakhstan last year on a Fulbright, has become her mentor.
Devereux traveled to Washington, D.C. last year to search for funding for the project, which she hopes to shoot on film, which is significantly more expensive than video. A cold call to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, started by Ted Turner and former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, resulted in a vital introduction to the Embassy of Kazakhstan, where she found support for the project. She was allowed to join Stone on a visit to the test site last January for 10 days to meet people involved in the project and gain a feel for the area.
"A lot of unbelievable doors have opened to me," Devereux said. "I feel very lucky to be able to tell this story."
Devereux said she does not have a science background, which is a rarity in MSU's Science and Natural History Filmmaking program. She came to MSU after a year at Columbia University's famed fiction filmmaking graduate program because she believed that documentary filmmaking might allow her to more quickly realize her professional goals.
"Whether it's narrative or documentary, my passion is directing," said Devereux, who has experience in both the documentary and commercial, or narrative, film world. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she returned to her native Southern California and spent several years in Hollywood as an assistant for an actor and an Oscar-winning director.
Ronald Tobias, an MSU film professor and director of the Science and Natural History Filmmaking, said Devereux's project addresses the essence of the program.
"What Anne is tackling is a really significant issue - the consequences of nuclear proliferation," Tobias said. "When it comes to making documentaries of social significance, this is one of the most important outcomes of the program that we could imagine."
Tobias said that Devereux is the first Fulbright winner for the four-year-old graduate program, although this year fellow students have also won an Emmy and five Telly awards for work in local, regional and cable programming.
"Their work is getting out there at the highest levels," Tobias said. "And Anne is raising the bar even higher."
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Contact: Anne Devereux at anne@thedmp.com or Ronald Tobias (406) 994-6227
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| [View or Download] | 1. | MSU grad student Anne Devereux has won a prestigious Fulbright award to make a film about the former Soviet nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan. |
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