Cassettes from Exile

For much of Dennis Maxwell’s childhood, his father was living in exile, communicating with the family via cassette tapes. A few years ago Dennis went to Chile and helped his brother move. Among moving boxes they found around 20 cassettes. So Dennis listened to them again, and discovered that the story of his father and the impact of exile was even more complicated and fraught than he’d remembered.

Los Cassettes del Exilio is among the winners of the 2017 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. You can hear all of the winners here .

The editors were Camila Segura, Silvia Viñas and Daniel Alarcón; sound design by Désirée Bayonet; music composed by Ramtin Arablouei and the English translation was made by Patrick Moseley.

Dennis Maxwell was born in Santiago, Chile, and ‘grew up dreaming about persecutions and sounds of shrapnel’. When he was a boy he was given a camera, and at that moment began to dedicate himself to capturing images. He travelled to California, studied film and later stumbled upon radio. His work has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times Op-Docs, the KQED ‘Spark’ series, Providencia Film Festival (Chile), Festival International Global Bogotá (Colombia), BBC Mundo, Radio Ambulante, and Public Radio International’s The World.

Radio Ambulante is a Spanish-language podcast, distributed by NPR, that tells Latin American stories from anywhere Spanish is spoken, including the United States. They seek to bring the aesthetic of high-quality longform journalism to radio. They work with a talented community of storytellers and radio producers from different corners of the continent, while taking advantage of technology to produce, distribute and exchange stories. In 2014, Radio Ambulante was awarded the Gabriel García Márquez Prize for Innovation in Journalism, the most prestigious journalism honor in Latin America.

Junkies in the Country

The feature-maker Mehdi Ahoudig plunges the listener into the lives of drug addicts in the French countryside. Moving between young women struggling to loosen the grip of heroin on their lives and the people employed to help treat them, arrest them and monitor them.

Winner of the Prix Europa for Best Radio Documentary in 2015.

Mehdi Ahoudig is an author, sound director and filmmaker. He creates soundtracks for theatre and dance companies and teaches radio documentary. A regular contributor to ARTE Radio, he has won the Prix Europa three times.

English translation by Simon John.

Requiem from a Cemetery

Everyone in this story is dead. Everyone except its storyteller, Bengt Bok. As he walks around a cemetery, the voices of people he’s interviewed in the past emerge from the earth.

Bengt Bok is an award-winning radio journalist, documentary filmmaker and professor at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. You can read an extract from Bok’s meditation on the interview process ‘Encounter with the Other’ here.

This documentary was made for P1 Dockumentär on Sveriges Radio.

Translation by Sara Olsson.

Charo and the Qualia

A short feature from a longer work by the Spanish composer and sound designer Charo Calvo. Five women artists tell, in their mother tongue, a vital moment, an intense sensorial experience, that left a physical imprint. How can you transmit this experience through language when your words are translated? Qualia questions the impossibility of sharing with others the exact perception of a colour, of the temperature of a hand or the taste of wine.

In this short, we hear a story from Charo Calvo herself. Elegantly weaving between Spanish and its French translation. You can hear the full work here.

This short is the second in a two-part collaboration with Radio Papesse – a webradio and online audio archive devoted to contemporary art. Radio Papesse promotes a critical discourse around the visual arts and supports experimental sound and radiophonic productions by sharing and producing sound related artists’ projects. Qualia was selected to form part of Radio Papesse‘s Süden Radio, an ongoing project on the exploration of sound as a tool for critical thinking. It was also shortlisted for Palma Ars Acustica and the Grand Prix Nova in 2017.

Charo Calvo is a composer, sound designer and Professor of Composition for Media at Mons Conservatory, Brussels. She has composed for festivals, dance performances, theatre, film and radio. She received the Palma Ars Acustica 2014 and was selected for the Prix Europa and Phonurgia Nova with Phonobiographie #1. In 2017 she will be an artist in residence in Berlin selected by DAAD (Berliner Künstlerprogramm) for a year.

First produced for ABC Radio’s Soundproof with Miyuki Jokiranta. Co-produced with ACSR bruxelles and Carmelo Iannuzzo, FACR Wallonie-Bruxelles. Translation and voice Caroline Daish. Director, Editing, Sound Design and Mix – Charo Calvo. Mastering – Bastien Hidalgo Ruiz.

 

Zahava and the Qualia

A short feature from a longer work by the Spanish composer and sound designer Charo Calvo. Five women artists tell, in their mother tongue, a vital moment, an intense sensorial experience, that left a physical imprint. How can you transmit this experience through language when your words are translated? Qualia questions the impossibility of sharing with others the exact perception of a colour, of the temperature of a hand or the taste of wine.

In this short, we hear a story from Zahava Seewald – a singer and museum curator. Her story dances between Hebrew and a French translation. You can hear the full work here.

This short is the first in a two-part collaboration with Radio Papesse – a webradio and online audio archive devoted to contemporary art. Radio Papesse promotes a critical discourse around the visual arts and supports experimental sound and radiophonic productions by sharing and producing sound related artists’ projects. Qualia was selected to form part of Radio Papesse‘s Süden Radio, an ongoing project on the exploration of sound as a tool for critical thinking. It was also shortlisted for Palma Ars Acustica and the Grand Prix Nova in 2017.

Charo Calvo is a composer, sound designer and Professor of Composition for Media at Mons Conservatory, Brussels. She has composed for festivals, dance performances, theatre, film and radio. She received the Palma Ars Acustica 2014 and was selected for the Prix Europa and Phonurgia Nova with Phonobiographie #1. In 2017 she will be an artist in residence in Berlin selected by DAAD (Berliner Künstlerprogramm) for a year.

First produced for ABC Radio’s Soundproof with Miyuki Jokiranta. Co-produced with ACSR bruxelles and Carmelo Iannuzzo, FACR Wallonie-Bruxelles. Translation and voice Caroline Daish. Director, Editing, Sound Design and Mix – Charo Calvo. Mastering – Bastien Hidalgo Ruiz.

 

 

 

Summer Rain

To have and to lose control – a personal feature from Nanna Hauge Kristensen. 

This feature won first prize at the P1 Shortdox competition in 2017.

Nanna Hauge Kristensen (1980) lives in Copenhagen. She works as an anthropologist and has produced radio for the Danish Radio P1.

Inferno

A phone call from a priest led Bengt Bok to the story of Jeanette E – a story which took place 40 years ago, in a small apartment on the outskirts of the city. In this still, frank and disturbing documentary Jeanette unveils the monstrousness behind the facade of our institutions and within the heart of her family.

NB. This documentary contains descriptions of sexual abuse.

Bengt Bok is an award-winning radio journalist, documentary filmmaker and professor at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. You can read an extract from Bok’s meditation on the interview process ‘Encounter with the Other’ here.

This documentary was made for P1 Dockumentär on Sveriges Radio.

Translation by Sara Olsson.

 

My Share of the Sky

My Share of the Sky artfully captures the disorientation of seeking refuge in a new country. Working on her first radio documentary – journalist Sheida Jahanbin recorded her own experiences, coached by Rikke Houd who also edited and structured the story with Jahanbin. Together they offer an inventive audio language which cracks and fragments – English, Persian and Norwegian jaggedly interrupt each other, artfully dizzying the listener, embodying the feeling of being lost in translations.

The documentary placed third at the Prix Europa in 2011.

My Share of the Sky was produced by Sheida Jahanbin and Rikke Houd for NRK with support from i-m-s.dk.

Editing and sound: Rikke Houd. Mix and final Editing: Erki Halvorsen. NRK consultant: Kjetil Saugestad. Norwegian voice: Annette Hobson. Translation: Eric Scobie.

As part of our ongoing collaboration with RadioDoc Review, we’re featuring an essay by the feature-maker Alan Hall about My Share of the Sky.

My Share of the Sky · RadioDoc Review

To Linda

After the death of her twin, Linda Mortansdóttir offers a tender exploration of the life they shared and the aspects of her brother she struggled to know. The feature unfurls a loving portrait of Rasmus Rasmussen whilst delicately unpicking the societal prejudice he faced growing up on the Faroe Islands.

This story was Linda Mortansdóttir’s documentary debut. It was nominated for the Prix Europa in 2016 and finished in the top 10. The documentary was made in collaboration with Third Ear, with production coaching from Tim Hinman and Rikke Houd. It was first broadcast on national public service radio in the Faroe Islands and later released as a Third Ear x Politiken podcast in a new version. Since making this documentary Mortansdóttir has moved back to the Faroe Islands with her family.

In 2006, stories of LGBT people being harassed started to emerge in the capital of the Faroe Islands – Tórshavn. Incidents where people had been chased and attacked. There was a particular incident, the one mentioned in this story, that reached the media’s attention and provoked fierce debate.

The debate reached Parliament – the Christian right wing vs. the left liberal wing. Many people wanted the Discrimination Act (§266b), to include ‘sexual orientation’ in order to protected homosexual people in the Faroes under the law, so that they wouldn’t be discriminated against, when applying for jobs, etc.

Some politicians argued, that there were no gay people in the Faroes, and therefore we didn’t need this change in §266b. But the incident in this story, proved, that this was not true. After this there was a concrete case, giving evidence that homosexuals in the Faroes were persecuted.

After several months of debate in Parliament, and on social media, Parliament voted 16 against and 17 for the proposal was approved, so that ‘sexual orientation’ was included in the Discrimination Act.

 

 

Mum Here

Mathilde Guermonprez edits together messages left by mothers on answering machines in a sharp, funny and moving montage.

Mathilde Guermonprez makes documentaries, news reports and sound projects for ARTE Radio, and also participates in the creation of web documentaries. Her work focuses on personal subjects as well as societal studies. An ungrateful daughter of 40 years, she rarely phones her mother back.