Author: Radio Atlas

Sometimes immigrants want to stay super connected to their home countries because they feel that connection slipping away. And well, they can go overboard. At least, that’s what Eduardo Bolioli noticed.

This story was produced by Martina Castro as part of an audio documentary series she made with her class at the University of Montevideo for her 2015 Fulbright grant. The series, called ‘Los Retornados’, features first-person stories from Uruguayans who had left their country to seek better opportunities and who ended up returning – many as part of a wave of reverse migration triggered by the worldwide financial crisis in 2009. The series was also turned into an audio exhibit at the Museum of Migration in Montevideo, Uruguay where it is currently being integrated into the museum’s permanent collection.

Martina Castro is the founder and CEO of Adonde Media, a globally-minded podcast production company based in Brooklyn, New York.

Over the past fifteen years, Martina has produced and edited award-winning audio content in both the U.S. and Latin America. She has worked at NPR, KALW-FM in San Francisco, CA, and NPR’s Radio Ambulante, a Spanish-language narrative journalism podcast she co-founded in 2011. She is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on the art of narrative radio storytelling. Martina launched Adonde Media in 2017 and has worked with clients such as TED, Duolingo, NPR, and Vice News to create podcasts that aim to bring new audiences to the medium.

Mie Tast always knew she wanted a baby. Finding herself at age 34 and still not a mother, there is one question she can’t get off her mind – how long does she dare to wait?

Mie Tast is a Danish journalist. With experience in news reporting and live-tv production, she is now teaching tv and radio at a Folk High School.

Two Lines is the winner of the 2019 Danish Shortdox competition.

‘A Salad Spinner’s Song’ won the ‘Create’ and ‘Create GanBéarla’ awards at the 2019 HearSay International Audio Arts Festival.

Beginning the project in 2016, this is the first chapter of an ‘audio-album’ for Frederik capturing sonic pictures from his childhood.

Johanna Fricke is an audio documentary maker, oral historian and social-anthropologist. Based in Leipzig, she works for the German public radio as a freelance author/producer.

The Box (A Caixa) was shortlisted for both the ‘Create’ and ‘Create GanBéarla’ awards at the 2019 HearSay International Audio Arts Festival.

Sofia Saldanha is an award winning audio producer. She started her radio adventure in Portugal at Rádio Universitária do Minho, has a masters degree in Radio and is a graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Sofia is part of In The Dark, a non-profit organization based in London, that presents audio documentaries from around the world to live audiences. In 2018 she started In The Dark Lisboa. Sofia is the author of a documentary series that tells the story of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Helene talks about growing up with a mother that never really grew up herself.

Originally produced for the Plantrekkers podcast, this shortened version was made for the HearSay International Audio Arts Festival where it won the 2019 ‘Celebrate GanBéarla’ award.

Interview by Joyce de Badts, sound design by Wederik de Backer, music by Tim Liebaert.

A tragic accident tears a mother and wife from her family. Twenty years later, two sisters speak for the first time about the loss of their mother.

Time to Talk was shortlisted for the HearSay International Audio Arts Festival ‘Create’ and ‘GanBéarla’ awards in 2019.

Music: ‘Rosenkind’ by Favne

Miriam Arndts is a German-Danish journalist. She lives in Copenhagen where she writes and produces reports, in-depth background stories, radio documentaries and features. She loves to meet quirky people and tell intimate stories.

Aaji (Grandma) is in her 90s, proficient in English but more comfortable in Marathi, and hard-of-hearing. Mithu is in her 30s, okay at Marathi (but speaks in a stilted, error-filled, and somewhat childlike way common to many second-generation immigrants), and heartbroken. The piece explores how bearing witness to each other in a family context can be hard and fraught, even when it might be worth it.

ROW-cub won the Fiction Award at the 2019 HearSay International Audio Arts Festival.

Neena Pathak is an audio producer based in NYC. She currently produces the Still Processing podcast at The New York Times.

“We have life in our imaginations…”

Exploring three alternative visions, ‘A Voice from Utopia’ attempts to deconstruct the concept of the nation state. From virtual communities like Bitnation to micronations like Liberland.

It comes from Blank Maps – an Arabic podcast that seeks to address the problem of statelessness in the Arab world. By doing that, the show tries to understand concepts of belonging and citizenship at a time where immigration and refuge are most relevant.

Tala Elissa is a writer and podcast producer from Jordan. Her work can be found at www.talaelissa.com

Blank Maps was produced for the podcast network Sowt. You can learn more about Sowt here.

“In 1932 a young, Danish woman went as the first Danish nurse to the sparsely populated Greenlandic east coast. She trained as a nurse with the sole purpose of going to Greenland, but she didn’t get to live there for a year. One night she went out into the frozen landscape. She walked out on towards the sea, to the edge of the ice. Here the story ends with her footprints…”

Deep beneath the Greenlandic ice, lies a hidden history. The Danish feature-maker Rikke Houd travels in the footsteps of Karen Roos, who disappeared on the ice outside the small East Greenlandic town of Tasiilaq in 1933.

Winner of the 2015 In The Dark award for audio documentary presented at Sheffield Doc/fest. Produced with support from the Danish Arts Council. 

thirdear.dk 

Silvestro has worked in the mine since he was 23 years old – now he’s 67. Manlio, at 40, left teaching to go and work in the mine, but to know himself and this new world, had to take on its most infamous job – the time-keeper. He’s now 88.

The paths of these two men, different but parallel, meet in 1992 when they barricade themselves into the San Giovanni mine for months – laying explosives across the opening, preventing its closure and the slow desertification of the territory at that time. Years later, after the mines are closed and the desertification advances, Manlio and Silvestro revisit the ghosts of their past.

Best Radio Documentary at the Prix Italia and Prix Europa 2018.

Directed by Gianluca Stazi and Giuseppe Casu
Script by Gianluca Stazi and Giuseppe Casu
Sound by Gianluca Stazi
Editing by Gianluca Stazi
Producing organisation: Tratti Documentari
Co-producing organisation: Rai Radio3
Commissioning editors: Daria Corrias and Fabiana Carobolante for Tre Soldi – Radio3 Rai

A message from the makers –

Dear listener,

After years of work we are happy to see this story going to the world alone. Send us a text or sound message to let us know where “The Upside Down” has arrived. We will read your words or listen to your voice with the miners of Sulcis Iglesiente.

Feedback will be published here: tratti.org/listeners/

Here is our mail: info@tratti.org

Keep fighting!

Gianluca and Giuseppe

tratti.org