In the fall of 2006, four fearless Ridgewood High School freshmen--Joe Giancristofaro, Hannah Jones, John Sandler, and Tess Thomas--entered Ramapo College's Helen R. Burchell Scholars World History Seminar, and annual competition which involves the research and writing of a collegiate level history paper on a pre-selected category. Four finalist teams are then invited to Ramapo College to defend their research and to accompany their work with a visual aid. For the topic "Disasters in World History," these students proposed to research the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. Traditionally the competition involves Northern NJ upper classmen, so when the team of freshmen made the competition finals with their research paper, they decided to do something special for the presentation. The result is Chernobyl Generation, a short film that mixes music and excerpts of oral history from Svetlana Aleksievich's Voices from Chernobyl with photographs of victims. The paper and film earned the students top honors in the competition. In addition, Chernobyl Generation was featured in the New York Independent Film Festival.
