Kamtschatka - Ein Ende der Welt im Schatten der Vulkane (1993)

11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.