Danube Watch 1/2020 - There's Nothing Small About This Short Film

There's Nothing Small About This Short Film

Insight into 'The Black Sea: Can Europe's Most Polluted Sea be Saved?'

Sitting down in person with these two was never really an option for Danube Watch (Covid-19 precautions notwithstanding) as they are normally something of a globetrotting duo. Luckily for us, we were able to link-up in a video-chat with Abdujalil and Jonah while both are calling Ukraine their home-base and waiting to be able to travel again for new stories. “We were making plans early this year to go to Kyrgyzstan and look at lakes and glaciers”, explains Jonah. “Now everything is basically frozen until this is resolved. It's very hard to think beyond Covid-19, unfortunately, but that's the reality of the world we live in”.

Under normal circumstances, these two would not be in one place for this long. “We have both worked for the BBC for quite a long time”, says Jonah, “and before Ukraine, I was in Myanmar, Thailand, South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan and Eritrea”. Abdujalil adds: “I was based in Central Asia in Kazakhstan, but I was travelling around the world doing different stories too”. Both skilled in many aspects of film production and reporting, as a team they are able to cover all the bases needed. “We're the kind of people who get sent off on the more speculative, remote type stories for BBC news just because of our skill set and the fact that they know if they send us somewhere, we'll come out with something”, confides Jonah.

This helps to explain a bit of the 'how' regarding their Black Sea documentary. The 'why' is not shocking when already privy to the background of this duo: “Basically we were looking for a kind of story that hadn't necessarily seen a lot of attention before, something that would allow us to go and do interesting things outside the normal beat of what we do here in Ukraine”, says Jonah. “On top of that, we were interested in looking at environmental issues particularly”.

This is when Abdujalil reached out to Jaroslav Slobodnik, technical coordinator of all four of the ICPDR’s Joint Danube Surveys (JDS) since 2001 and, as it happened, also a team leader of the EU/UNDP EMBLAS project organising the Joint Black Sea Surveys (JBSS) in 2016, 2017 and 2019. The biggest research vessel in the Black Sea, Mare Nigrum from Constanta, Romania was used to go across the sea from Odessa, Ukraine to Batumi, Georgia and collect samples for the follow up scientific analyses. The JDS4 and the third JBSS were happening almost at the same time in summer of 2019. “He mentioned this boat trip and that's what made it interesting because the water conservation science sounded quite boring to me initially”, acknowledges Abdujalil. “Once I heard that on this boat trip there would be scientists taking different measures, I thought along the way we would also see different things like the dolphins they were protecting, or some other nice visuals, like divers on the boat. That sounded generally quite interesting”, he continues, “so Jaroslav showed me this booklet that they had with 12 facts on the Black Sea which uses language understood to non-scientists such as ‘Black Sea: healthy or sick, how to make a diagnosis’. When I read it, I thought it had very interesting things about this survey and what makes it so valuable”.

Jonah Fisher and Abdujalil Abdurasulov

For example, the findings from the surveys show compliance with European environmental legislation (Marine Strategy Framework Directive and Water Framework Directive) by Ukraine and Georgia with 8 out of 11 descriptors within the MSFD having been covered by the surveys so far. The Danube river is considered, due to its size, to be the largest contributor of pollution to the Black Sea. The results of JBSSs, however, clearly demonstrate that the more than 13 billion EUR invested into the DRB by the EU in the past two decades resulted in the turning back of the trend of 'continuous silent death' of the north-western region of the Black Sea and has brought signs of its recovery instead.

Jonah sheds some light on how they then arrived at the story they wanted to tell: “We sort of worked back from that trip to try and think about how we could make it an interesting film and not too 'sciency'. We spent a lot of time on that ship and the kind of the balance we had to strike was to try to make the story relatable for people – not just endlessly show people doing tests, talking about the quality of the water – because after a few days, even we were losing our enthusiasm for it”.

“We always have a challenge to try and make people understand why they should care about the more complicated things in life”, elaborates Jonah. “That was part of what we were trying to do in this piece: go off on little tangents from what the experts were looking at on that boat and try to relate it to people's lives. We tried to connect it to things like the rubbish on people's beaches, or questions like 'can you swim in the river'?, and 'where does your sewage go’?. Things like that to make it more relatable”.

Achieving relatability when hard science is involved can prove tricky, and often other approaches were necessary. Along with trying to make the scientific work relatable to the every-man, Jonah and Abdujalil had to help the experts understand how to be understood. “We were with these guys for a week or so, and we would encourage them to try and speak in layman's terms as much as possible”, confides Jonah. “There were a few moments when I had to say 'hold on, I understand this because I've been on your boat for a while, but you're going to have to boil that down into something which someone on the street might understand.' It's particularly easy when they're surrounded by other scientists to kind of forget what the baseline knowledge of these things is”.

With limited space within the film itself, decisions on what to include were sometimes based on avoiding what could be too 'sciency' for many people. “To be honest, we filmed the large amount on the boat which was just too detailed and nitty-gritty that didn't end up getting into it”, admits Jonah. But some of the scientific specifics were not the only content to be cut back. “The one thing that I really liked, which didn't get into the film very much, was the boat trip with the dolphin watchers”, tells Abdujalil. “It was early morning, and there was beautiful light because, at that time, it was very calm so we had a wonderful sunrise. The visuals looked great”. Reminiscing further, both men shared their favourite memory during their time shooting the documentary. “Strangely”, admits Jonah, “I really quite enjoyed going to the sewage plant in Budapest because I'm one of these people who really likes to see how things work, and the actual nuts-and-bolts of things we take for granted in every-day life. So, going inside a sewage plant like that and actually seeing where it all goes and how it's processed was great”.

“For me”, laughs Abdujalil, “it would have to be when I was trying out filming with my drone on the first day on the ship and crashed it”! He explains: “I thought it would be a challenge but that I could manage. I didn't calculate the how quickly the ship would be moving, and I was running out of battery. In the end, my drone was beeping, telling me the battery was dying. There was no time, it was either lose it – land it in the sea – or crash it onto the deck, so I crashed it. But I managed to save the footage”!

Great visuals and good memories can only have so much effect on the response to the film which, like most things dealing with environmental issues, had its fair share of detractors. “There were some governments in the region which did not like it”, concedes Abdujalil. “They were not happy that we showed all the problems”, he continues. “I guess they were expecting more of a PR film that would tell all about the good stuff that they're doing, all their efforts, and somehow avoid talking about the problems”. This is far from the whole picture, however. “Many people did like it, including officials from those same countries and scientists in this field”, says Abdujalil.

As for the general public, the impact on people's way of thinking is harder to judge. “But it's definitely raising awareness among people”, states Abdujalil. “I can tell you that on that first day the film was posted on the BBC website it was one of their most watched videos”. The popularity of it has even led to versions in other languages. “It was picked up by the Turkish Services Company that are translating it into Turkish”, explains Abdujalil. “There are also Ukrainian and Russian versions of it, so in terms of the exposure it's been quite high”.

Since then, the video has continued to be a popular watch on the website, reflecting that it must resonate with viewers. “I think people appreciated seeing a story that they've maybe not heard a lot about before”, opines Jonah. “Also, crucially, they appreciated a story that wasn't unremittingly pessimistic. That there was a slight up curve at the end means a lot”, he continues. “In a world where a lot is going wrong and problems seem too big for anyone to resolve, the prospect that maybe things are getting better, some solutions are being found and that people had worked together to actually find solutions for problems has an impact”.

Danube Watch would like to thank Abdujalil Abdurasulov and Jonah Fisher once again for taking the time to discuss their film with us and share their experiences during, and thoughts on, the making of 'The Black Sea: Can Europe's Most Polluted Sea be Saved?'.