‘Have you eaten?’ is a common Chinese greeting, like asking ‘how are you?’ in English. In this short feature, Qing Hu uses the phrase to redraw a line of connection between her current home in New York and her grandmother.
Qing Hu is an audio producer and journalist based in New York now. She was born and raised in Xi’an, China.
Nuisibles (Pests) is a sonic study in the process of dehumanisation. Touching on themes of police violence and systemic racism.
Created by Ka-Young Park a documentary maker based in Seoul, specialising in immigrant issues, and Dimitris Roidis a performer and sound artist based in Athens.
Special thanks to: our professor and mentor, Frédérique Pressmann, for her unwavering support, valuable guidance, and unique energy. We are deeply grateful for her honest mentorship. Also, we owe a lot to Pascaline Perreti from Louis Lumière for her support in the research and production as well as to Charlotte Rouault for her invaluable initial feedback and mentorship. Lastly, we would like to thank Stavroula Karatheodorou for her help with translation during several on-site interviews.
First played in London at In The Dark Radio’s ‘What’s New?’ night
We easily recall the images, smells and tastes that have marked our lives, but what about the sounds? What about the voices of those who are no longer with us? What ultimately stands the test of time?
An intimate acoustic work by director Hrvoje Korbar and sound engineer Marija Pečnik Kvesić, La nave partira (The Ship Sails On) is a nostalgic dedication to family legacy, an audio reconstruction of fragments of personal and family memories and a farewell to a lost world and its languages.
Starting from the recording tapes the author found while clearing up the apartment after the death of his grandparents, the authors construct a collage of documentary footage, ambient sound, poetic autofictional texts and musical memories. The ephemeral nature of sound and human voice stands in opposition to the material nature of objects and images, the impermanence of memory trying to find its final form.
Winner of Best Short Form at the Prix Marulić (2024)
Producer: Adriana Kramarić
Director: Hrvoje Korbar
Sound engineer: Marija Pečnik Kvesić
Other key staff: Actors: Maruška Aras, Rok Juričić Composers: Sara Jakopović, Lovro Stipčević
A woman in her thirties struggles to get out of bed, to face herself in the mirror, and to muster the will to head to work. She’d much rather turn back and go for a swim.
“Nu Dan” is a concept album by Kate Vanackere, consisting of four tracks that offer a glimpse into the confined world of someone grappling with a quarter-life crisis.
The album was recorded in Kato’s bedroom during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, with invaluable remote assistance from Inne Eysermans.
Kato Vanackere creates audio, music, and theater. She studied Woordkunst at the royal conservatoire in Antwerp, and has been doing pretty fine recording birds in her spare time. In her work she sings about loneliness, farewells, moving forward, the sea and the city.
“I discovered that I had magical powers, the powers to transform the world’s soundtrack, to make it a better place to live…”
Winner of Best Short at Grand Prix Nova (2023) and Third Prize at the UK International Radio Drama festival (2023)
Eve-Marie Bouché (Paris, France) At first, she was a dramatic author, then she started writing texts for radio dramas (Radio France). But when she learned how to edit sounds, it was an epiphany, the discovery of another form of writing. She can’t stop any more!
First created for the Rás 1 (Channel 1) summer program Sumarmál, played at the 2023 International Features Conference.
In search of justice – a whisper can be louder than a shout; it stays in the heart and mind forever.
This programme explores issues around child sexual abuse and contains content that listeners may find distressing.
agnieszka czyżewska jacquemet – the executive producer/editor/author – has been working in Polish Radio at the Regional Broadcasting Station Radio Lublin S.A. since 1996. She is still amazed at the world and she approaches each story with curiosity and humility. She is convinced that human beings give soul and body to all disasters, wars, political decisions and social issues. A drop reflects the ocean. Co-founder and board member of the Audionomia Foundation.
She is the winner of the Silver Medal URTI/UNESCO 2022, Prix Europa 2019 – Special Commendations 2016 and 2021, Prix Bohemia 2017 and Grand Press Radio 2015 amongst others.
Familiar surroundings transform and friends and acquaintances turn into enemies.
Contains content that listeners may find distressing.
Sniper was the winner of the 1993 Prix Italia for Documentary.
In the transcript for the Prix Italia the producers described the process of making this feature –
“While researching Sniper, Stephen Schwartz discovered that while plenty of people talked about snipers, very few had actually talked to a sniper. So he got in touch with a colleague, Boro Kontic, in Sarajevo via the EBU satellite, which was the only secure line into the radio station in Sarajevo, and asked him to do the interviews with the snipers. When the tapes were ready they were smuggled out by an Irish TV man, who mailed them from Frankfurt during a stop-over. Much of the live sound in this programme was taken from TV coverage of the war in Sarajevo. The sounds were then processed digitally – like the rest of the programme.”
Directed by Stephen Schwartz
Recordings in Sarajevo by Boro Kontic
Sound by Frank Lindeskov
Translation by Jonathan Sydenham
Stephen Schwartz was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940, but moved to Denmark from 1961. He died in 2013. His programmes include ‘We People’ – a feature series from 1964 to 1979 – The Mind’s Eye (winner of the Prix Italia, 1982), Notes from a City Dump, The Amber Gatherer, Clouds in Flight and The Night Watchman – the documentary where he pioneered his landmark interview technique known as the ‘moments interview’ or the ‘full Schwartz’. You can learn more about it here.
Made in 1929 to accompany silent movies, with 913 pipes and 66 registers, it was the biggest cinema organ in Germany.
But the organ’s grandeur wasn’t celebrated for long. Soon after its construction, sound film took over and the Babylon’s instrument became superfluous. Now, almost a century later and thanks to a dedicated team, Kino Babylon in Berlin Mitte has become a haven for lovers of silent film.
But it takes more than outdated technical equipment to experience this fading art in an authentic way. It requires quick fingers and the ability to improvise in real-time with a myriad of keys and buttons. A rare skill – and one that Babylon has found in the organist Anna Vavilkina.
Featuring Timothy Grossman, managing director of Babylon, and the organist Anna Vavilkina. Recorded in November 2018.
Phoebe McIndoe and Marta Medvešek are audio producers from the UK and Croatia, living and working in Berlin. They love producing creative, cutting-edge documentaries as well as poetic sound meditations. Most of all, they like to play. They say that collaborating helps them remove the pressure and allows them to have fun in the process.
This was created as part of the audio artist Axel Kacoutié’s live In The Dark event – an evening of magical audio, conjuring aural visions to transport you through time, and space, returning you back to yourself and the world.
It was heard before their documentary A Mother Tongue, which can be listened to – with subtitles – here.