Review: Documentary 'The Russian Woodpecker' Takes The Form Of A Conspiracy Thriller

When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown on April 26th, 1986 (one of the worst such disasters in human history), it caused toxic nuclear material to poison much of the USSR and Eastern Europe. The effects of the meltdown are still being felt, with the area still largely unlivable and health issues afflicting the survivors and their descendents still being investigated and categorized. But the shadow of Chernobyl echo over the past thirty years as an example of the cruelty and arrogance of the Soviet Union. The endlessly fascinating and sharply bizarre documentary "The Russian Woodpecker" starts out as a nutty conspiracy theory before morphing into a far more relevant and barbed re-contextualization of the tragedy in the light of recent tensions between the Ukraine and Russia.

This documentary starts off as a biography of Ukrainian artist Fodor Alexandrovich, whose work combines performance art with more classical forms and is often...