Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

The Hospital Always Wins: Review 2, Michelle Boyd

RadioDoc Review

This documentary raises crucial questions about our definitions of mental health and healing as well as the meaning of forgiveness. It also illustrates how an individual’s ability to extract themselves from the grip of institutional power is highly dependent on luck and money and privilege. Perhaps most importantly, this piece gives voice, in a complex, respectful manner, to Ibrahim and other schizophrenics whose struggles remain buried and ignored. One element that is missing from this story is an account of how race complicates this unequal power dynamic. Ibrahim is black… “Hospital’s” impact might have been even wider had …

The Hospital Always Wins: Review 1, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

This documentary gives a graphic and challenging insight into the thinking of a schizophrenic mind. But whose story is it, producer Laura Starecheski’s or mental inpatient Issa Ibrahim’s? The process of recording a documentary over such a long period of time (ten years) is tough and always difficult to negotiate. What starts out as a journalistic exercise becomes something very different as your relationship develops over time with the people you are recording. Here, it’s the narrator who drives the story on, weaving in and out of the interviews and actuality, and it’s the strength of the writing that compels …

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 …