About This Blogski
Stranger in a Strange Land
Weapons of choice: me posing with a heavily armed guard at the
Ingush-Chechen border in Nov. 1999 (I’m the suave one on the right).
Добро пожаловать! Welcome to my Strange Journeys weblog. I’m Peter Enright (Питер Энрайт) and I’ll be your guide through this picture-rich blog that chronicles my five year odyssey across Russia and the former Soviet republics as a Moscow-based TV documentary & news cameraman-editor. This blog is primarily for anyone interested in news & documentary filmmaking and/or the gritty reality of living and working in Russia. It is a crazy, colourful and sometimes shocking collection of my original e-mails (I was ‘blogging’ to family and friends long before the term was coined) describing my roller-coaster ride through the dark heart of the New Russia; to say that I led a colourful existence in this far-flung corner of the planet is something of an understatement.
Join me on these voyages through the land of vodka and pelmeni and you’ll get you a taste of what it’s like to live and work on the edge; from freezing my arse off in -45ºC in the remote Siberian tundra, to shooting blood-stained torture chambers in war-torn Chechnya, to the alcohol-fuelled debauchery of Ladies Night in Moscow’s infamous Hungry Duck bar.
Grimace for the camera: this is me fighting a – 32º C blizzard as I filmed
in Petro-Pavlovsk, the capital of Kamchatka, far eastern Russia.
From the burning sands of Turkmenistan to the snowbound mountains of northern Afghanistan, from Krasnoyarsk to Kamchatka, my assignments have taken me into forbidden zones most of you have never even heard of before, let alone seen up close. I’ve been exposed to hazardous radiation levels in Chernobyl, chased the Red Cross through earthquake aftermath in the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, braved a Siberian prison rife with drug-resistant tuberculosis, covered a mass funeral service for the 9000 plus victims brutally executed by Stalin’s NKVD during the political purges of the thirties, filmed the Kursk submarine tragedy from Murmansk, as well as humanitarian and economic collapse stories in Chukotka and Kamchatka, and even uncovered dark secrets in Moscow’s KGB Museum to name just a few.
Here I’m shooting filming Chechen soldiers in an army barracks with Dutch correspondent Esther Verhalle in Grozny, Chechnya Oct. 1999.
I’ve been crash-tackled by Russian soldiers while interviewing refugees in Chechnya, filmed inside a mobile nuclear ICBM launcher at a secret Russian military base and even knelt in bear poo just to get a good angle for a story on orphaned bear cubs. And those were just the good days…
Working in Russia wasn’t always fraught with danger, like when I filmed hairdresser
to the stars and fashion designer Sergei Zverev with his model girlfriend
for the British lifestyle TV series ‘Eurotrash.’
And if you thought that working with foreign correspondents in exotic locations was a life of luxury spent swanning around five star hotels rubbing shoulders with the beautiful, rich and famous, then these blogs will blow that myth well and truly out of the water!
As you can see, TV is a tough game. The cameraman must measure up
to Russia’s own Arnie, bodybuilder & actor, Alex Nevsky.
And yes, that is an X-Files t-shirt I’m wearing.
Although this blog covers the period from 1996 – 2001, many of the details and situations remain current and relevant today, especially in the regions beyond Moscow, where little has changed since Soviet times. In due course, I shall incorporate numerous photographs and video clips, so keep checking back for the latest updates. You can view my Strange Journeys video clips here!
Now, sit back, relax with a coffee, cold beer or vodka and zakuski as I bounce you from one extreme to another on a whirlwind tour of duty in far away places with strange-sounding names.
Why? I came into this game for adventure. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble, a man alone. Now they’ve got the whole country sectioned off and you can’t move without a form. I’m the last of a breed. Robert de Niro as Archibald “Harry” Tuttle, rogue HVAC repairman in Terry Gilliam’s brilliant & dark Brazil
The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut: Have you seen the original version of Brazil or the shortened and sanitised American version? Read about the fascinating behind-the-scenes details of the making of the film and Gilliam’s momentous battles with Universal over the length and the tone of the film plus an in-depth analysis of the differences between the two versions.
