Homer News (Alaska)_Estonian film crew visits Nikolaevsk (October 10)

10.10.2007

One Saturday morning in the near future, viewers in Tallinn, Estonia, will turn on the TV and see and hear the Nikolaevsk Elementary-High School Russian language class singing songs and speaking in Russian.

Students at Nikolaevsk had a rare opportunity to reach across the world Monday when they were visited by a television crew from Subboteja, a program that airs on channel two in the Estonian capital. The show, with Russian with Estonian subtitles, follows a magazine format.

Co-anchors Aleksandr Zukerman and Mihhail Vladislavlev and cameraman Riho Prees are in Alaska on a grant from the U. S. State Department's Office of Broadcast Support. The grant program, Television Cooperatives, gives money to about 60 TV teams each year. The teams are nominated by the press section of U.S. embassies around the world to shoot stories, reports and documentaries in the U.S.

TV producer and director George Santulli manages the program. He said it helps people in other countries see the good and bad parts of America.

"Since it lets them see America through their own eyes, it lets them see what's really here," he said. "(They can) fully investigate, explore and discover what's here on their own."

With Santulli as their guide, Zukerman, Vladislavlev and Prees are making a whirlind tour of Alaska, paying visits to Anchorage, Bethel, Qwethluk, Kenai, Nikolaevsk, Ninilchik, Kodiak, Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka.

Zukerman said the heavy travel is all in a day's work for the crew.

"We have been to America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe - all the countries of Europe except Portugal and Serbia," he said.

Zukerman and Vladislavlev estimate they have been to 52 countries gathering footage for their show, which Santulli likens to a National Geographic program.

"We prefer our viewers not to know what is going to be next," Zukerman said. "We want them to be surprised."

On previous visits to the U.S., Zukerman and Vladislavlev have covered such quintessentially American subjects as Graceland, Al Capone, elections, Disneyland and space shuttle launches at Cape Canaveral.

"Such a thing as America doesn't exist," Zukerman said. "It's so different, like a rainbow."

Both Zukerman and Vladislavlev confessed to having a lifelong dream, inspired by Jack London books and colorful Alaska history, of coming to Alaska. But for their viewers in Estonia, part of the former Soviet Union, they hope their footage will have a deeper meaning.

"We want to show them an example of Alaska, how it is even more difficult than Estonia. We want to show them how to overcome difficulty," Zukerman said. "We would like to find people here (who are) very happy and ask, 'Why are you happy?'"

In Nikolaevsk, Zukerman and Vladislavlev had a chance to ask members of the Russian Old Believer population.

"A lot of people who moved to Alaska are looking for something that can give them harmony in life. They (Old Believers) find in Alaska a place they can follow their beliefs," Zukerman said.

For Estonia, which has a large Russian-speaking population, seeing a thriving group maintaining their Russian roots is important.

"It's a lookout for our culture, what it might be like in Estonia in 100 years, how to keep Russian roots even if you are so far," Zukerman said.

In a country emerging from communism, he said, it can be tough to reestablish those roots.

"The idea of national identity was very much exterminated (under the Soviet Union)," Zukerman said. "They (Estonians) don't feel themselves Russian or Estonian or Jew, they feel themselves Soviet, which is not an identity, it's political."

At Nikolaevsk, that Russian identity is very much alive. After hearing two songs in Russian, the TV crew asked a few questions and filmed the class reciting the Russian alphabet, listing days of the week and months of the year and naming various weather patterns. Zukerman and Vladislavlev said the Russian spoken at Nikolaevsk is "preserved" from the past, and very different from what is spoken in Europe today.

"When the small guy (a student) talked to me, one phrase, at first I didn't understand. He used such Russian words which I know only from my childhood books and fairytales. Suddenly, someone speaks it. This is Russian which is absolutely unique," Zukerman said.

Before the crew left the school, Zukerman grabbed a globe and, with the entire class clustered around him, showed them where to find Estonia.

After visiting Nikolaevsk, the crew filmed a Native Youth Olympics practice at Ninilchik School on Tuesday. They will wind up their visit in Sitka on Alaska Day, the day Alaska changed hands from Russia to the United States.

Carolyn Norton can be reached at carolyn.norton@homernews.com