Digital Commons Network^™

Mothers And Daughters In The Digital Private Era: Review Of “A Life Sentence: Victims, Offenders, Justice And My Mother” By Samantha Broun And Jay Allison And “Mariya” By Mariya Karimjee, Kaitlin Prest, And Mitra Kaboli., Michele Hilmes, Professor Emerita

RadioDoc Review

The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate storytelling, much of it told by women. Freed from the bonds of technology, scale, and forms of support and distribution that keep traditional radio relentlessly mainstream, the new “digital privacy” of the last fifteen years has allowed new kinds of stories to be told: or rather, has allowed some of the oldest stories in the world to finally be spoken aloud. In both “Mariya” and “A Life Sentence” sexual violence against women is portrayed in all its complexity, tragedy, and terrible familiarity.

In “A Life Sentence,” Samantha Broun …

La Revolte Des Prostituées/The Sex Workers Revolt: A Dual Analysis, Sean Prpick, Maud Beaulieu

RadioDoc Review

This documentary chronicles how hundreds of French sex workers went on strike in 1975 and occupied five Catholic churches to protest against police abuse and government closure of their workplace. Forty years on, Australian producer, academic and sex worker rights researcher Eurydice Aroney revisits the Lyon cathedral occupied by the women with the full blessing of its cleric, Père Blanc, now ninety years old. Interviews with Blanc and some of the original sex worker protesters are interwoven with archival material to make a compelling audio story, selected as a finalist for the UK In The Dark award (2015).

This work …

Balancing Personal Trauma, Storytelling And Journalistic Ethics: A Critical Analysis Of Kirsti Melville's The Storm, Mia Lindgren

RadioDoc Review

When Kirsti Melville’s documentary The Storm about the life-long impact of child sexual abuse was broadcast in 2014, it contributed to a public debate about sexual abuse. Hundreds of listeners commented on the ABC Radio National website and Facebook pages, expressing how deeply moved they were, praising both the subject of the story Erik and the journalist Kirsti for their bravery and honesty in making the documentary, and remarked that Erik’s personal story helped them understand the issue better. Kirsti Melville won three national awards for her program, which also documented her personal story as Erik’s former partner.

This critique …

From The Limbo Zone Of Transmissions: Gregory Whitehead’S "On The Shore Dimly Seen", Virginia Madsen

RadioDoc Review

In this review-essay, Virginia Madsen enters the polyphonous 'limbo zone of transmissions' created by Gregory Whitehead's most recent 'performed documentary' and radio provocation, "On the shore dimly seen". This composed voicing, drawn from verbatim texts courtesy of WikiLeaks and the dysfunctionality of America's Guantanamo Bay, is heard as a fortuitous chance encounter with a medium – and as an increasingly rare listening 'detour' while Madsen is on the road. This essay is thus both a reflection upon the nature of the radio offered here, the chance listening experience to work of this kind, and upon the distinctive body of work …

On The Shore Dimly Seen: Review, Götz Naleppa

RadioDoc Review

A new wave of understanding and agreement with all sorts of secret service methods which pretend to protect us against terrorism makes Whitehead’s radio performance, On The Shore Dimly Seen, even more precious and important than at the time of its production. Because it is the voice of a radical believer in democracy and human rights: today a lonely voice in the chorus of fear. We hear Gregory Whitehead’s voice chanting the interrogation log of Guantanamo Bay detainee 063 (prisoners in Guantanamo do not have names, they are only numbers), interwoven with the voices of vocalist Gelsey Bell and …

The Hacker Syndrome: Review, Martin Johnson

RadioDoc Review

The Hacker Syndrome tells the story of Stephan Ubach, a man who is slowly revealed as an activist and a hero to those involved in the Arab Spring. A man who, as the story unfolds, forgets his own needs - and breaks down. This is also a story of distance - physical and mental. A story of the importance that information plays in people’s lives and how some people are willing to risk their lives for the world to know what is going on. Radio documentaries and features usually require an emotional attachment to the character, while computers, and often …

Senza Parole: A Review, Robyn Ravlich

RadioDoc Review

This is a charming radio feature of modest length in the form of a travel memoir. Its author-producer is Katharina Smets, a radio maker with a background in philosophy, theatre and philology with experience in teaching radio documentary at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp, Belgium and as a reporter and feature maker for Radio 1, KLARA (VRT in Belgium) and Holland Doc Radio (VPRO in The Netherlands). Originally produced in Dutch, her English language version of Senza Parole has attracted attention at both the Third Coast International Audio Festival (2014), USA and the Sheffield Doc/Fest (2014) in Britain.

In Senza …

Still Glowing Strong: Review 2 (Australia), Maree Delofski

RadioDoc Review

Still Glowing Strong is an elegant and poetic documentary about a dreamer. Harald Brobakkan has an obsessive desire to create an everlasting battery. From the outset, the minimalist music and Leganger’s beautifully written narration set up the tone of the documentary – gentle, respectful, restrained, occasionally melancholic yet never maudlin. Program maker Sindre Leganger very successfully conveys Harald’s story together with rich observations about the universe, science and its treatment of ‘outsiders’, life - and the nature of a very long relationship.

Still Glowing Strong: Review (Denmark), Anna Elisabeth Jessen

RadioDoc Review

Still Glowing Strong is Norwegian Sindre Leganger’s tender story of an old man, Harald, who thinks he has invented an everlasting battery that could save the world. The problem is that no one has the time to look at it – his wife in particular. But as Leganger and the old man’s grandson take an interest, this short but remarkable feature reveals much about our finite lives and the eternal starry sky above us, about being stubborn, being optimistic and about hope. Leganger illustrates Zola’s dictum, that “art is a corner of reality seen through a temperament”. He plays three …

Editorial Overview, Volume 2, Issue 1, Siobhan A. Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

Overview of the nine audio features critiqued by Guest Reviewers, who are themselves eminent producers and curators of audio features. The works reviewed are from the US, UK, Canada, France, Poland and Denmark.

Golden Boy - Zĺoty Chĺopak: A Review, Anna Sekudewicz

RadioDoc Review

This feature is a story woven from the lives of two people: Abraham, the son of a tailor from Łódź, and Kasia Michalak, who’s also from Łódź and whose grandfather was a tailor. How do you present Abraham Tuszyński without pigeon-holing his story as yet another tragic Holocaust narrative – particularly since the programme-maker wanted to avoid making a strictly historical feature? Where and how to find excitement, tension, heat and feelings in material that is by nature informational, objective, cold and factual? Despite posing a huge risk, the collision of the two stories, or realities, creates a new perspective, …

Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel: A Review, Sarah Geis

RadioDoc Review

Although producer Pejk Malinowski is originally from Denmark, and Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel is a project of London-based Falling Tree Productions, its premise seems cringingly American: our narrator goes to a self-help class, has an encounter with a celebrity. Which is to say, the risk of self-indulgence is high. To make it worse: the documentary takes place almost entirely within Malinovski’s mind. But these factors make it only more astonishing to hear how – through his singular voice, playful sense of humour, and impeccable sound design – Malinovski tells a story that makes the listener laugh, feel, and consider …

Nothing But Bones (Rien Que Les Os): A Review, Irène Omélianenko

RadioDoc Review

This documentary by the French artist Floy Krouchi in collaboration with Nathalie Battus and Bruno Mourlan from Radio France is a hybrid piece that lies between music and poetic creation. It attempts to make a radiophonic connection between the mythic memory of the indigenous peoples of India and what remains today in certain pieces of music, in (people’s) memory, in singing and translation. The project began five years ago (2010) in Southern India where Floy Krouchi was then travelling. There she heard a short piece of music taken from a very ancient tradition that struck her as so strange and …

The Change In Farming: A Review, Neil Sandell

RadioDoc Review

The protagonist of the CBC documentary, The Change in Farming, is an 89-year-old farmer, called Henry. We learn that his grandson, Adam, has been recording Henry’s reminiscences about farming as a way of preserving his family heritage. The program was produced in 1998 by Adam Goddard, a 25-year-old musician and composer, in collaboration with veteran CBC producer, Steve Wadhams.

Adam is more hunter-gather than farmer. He collects found sound, an artist alert to its musical possibilities. He is composing a work using Henry’s speech. We hear the elder’s reaction. And then, in an indispensable coda, the two of them …

Efter Festen (After The Celebration): A Review, Leslie Rosin

RadioDoc Review

This 2002 feature is a masterpiece of our genre. On one level, the story examines how a young man called Allan told on Danish radio how he confronted his father at his 60^th birthday celebration with the devastating fact that the father had abused him and his twin sister as children. But Allan’s story is also the subject of the successful Danish film The Celebration by Thomas Vinterberg, part of the Dogma Film Group founded by Lars von Trier. The feature’s title, Efter Festen, (After the Celebration) is ambiguous in Danish, the Danish word 'efter' being …

Qui A Connu Lolita: Who Killed Lolita? A Review, Chris Brookes

RadioDoc Review

The brilliant and disturbing work Qui a Connu Lolita? (Who Knew Lolita?), or as it is more provocatively titled in the authors' English translation Who Killed Lolita?, starts with a precis: voices tell us there have been three deaths, of a mother and her two children, the bodies found in their Marseilles apartment two months later.

This is a composition for radio, not a collection of easy evidence for a police dossier. Who did kill Lolita? Who is to blame? The program draws its power from suggestion, like footnotes plucked from a subterranean soundtrack. It poses uncomfortable …

My Share Of The Sky: Review 2, Alan Hall

RadioDoc Review

This documentary by the celebrated Danish producer Rikke Houd, in collaboration with Iranian journalist Sheida Jahanbin, is a work of art. It is also a powerful piece of documentary journalism that measures the pulse of a young couple’s emigration from Iran and their attempts to settle in Norway. The narration by Sheida Jahanbin, our guide to establishing a new life as an asylum seeker, is lent a profound dimension by being choreographed in a sophisticated ‘hocketing’ with the voiced-over translation, which acts as Sheida’s Norwegian voice. This is an inspired device, which also serves as a metaphor in a story …

A Different Kind Of Justice: Review 2, Claudia Taranto

RadioDoc Review

A Different Kind of Justice tells the story of two people who met across a table in a restorative justice (RJ) conference, facilitated by Karl James, an RJ professional. Margaret’s home is robbed; Ian, a burglar and heroin addict, took a few small items, including a laptop with all her family photos. Margaret reveals that her daughter Jessica died in a car accident a few months after the burglary and the missing photos now mean so much more to the family.

The program is essentially interviews with the two characters, intercut, as they each tell their version of their shared …

Poetry, Texas: A Critical Reflection, Kyla Brettle

RadioDoc Review

Poetry, Texas is a lyrical work in which an ensemble of voices, snatches of actuality and compelling narration is woven into a meditation on a fading way of life and beauty within the ordinary. It's a piece in which style and substance figure as enamoured equals engaged in a delightful dance. Malinovski's journey into the heart of the Texan town of Poetry is the central narrative frame of this work. An ensemble cast of fourteen characters including a cowboy called Rooster, Don Strictland, the undeclared mayor of Poetry, schoolchildren, various religious leaders and the local historian gives voice to the …

Poetry, Texas: Review 1, Seán Street

RadioDoc Review

Documentaries and features are about stories, but although they share much common ground, they often occupy very different worlds. In many radio cultures a documentary is a journalistic framework for seeking answers to questions, whereas a feature may often be an impressionistic hybrid that can contain drama, music and poetry, moving often towards not necessarily answers, but more questions. A documentary CAN be a feature, when it documents the maker's journey as they seek a way through their subject, asking questions of themselves as much as their chosen story, often through evocation rather than exposition. Poetry, Texas is just such …