The Selects Podcast

Today we're sharing a classic Sean Cole work from his time on the documentary team at WBUR's Inside Out.  It's a beautiful work of scene and memory, taking listeners to a reunion for a town that hasn't physically existed for generations. 

Today we're featuring a excerpt of a work that explores the relationship of art, documentary, and history through a search for class struggle in Appalachia.  Beyond the limited academic concept of oral history, I Can Almost See the Lights of Home: A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky is a essay-in-sound that weaves the words and stories of Harlan County residents with the sounds and music of the place itself.  The result is documentary art, and a deeply compelling listen.   Original Series Credits: "I Can Almost See the Lights of Home ~ A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky An Essay-In-Sound" Writers: Charles Hardy III and Alessandro Portelli Interviews: Alessandro Portelli Musical recordings: Alessandro Portelli and Charles Hardy III Producer/Engineer: Charles Hardy Financial assistance provided by the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, the West Chester University Faculty Development Program, the English Department of the Univerity of Rome "La Sapienza," and a grant from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. Special thanks to Annie Napier, Ron Grele, Mary Marshall Clark, Stig Hornshøf-Møller, Steve Rowland, and the participants of the 1997 Oral History Research Office Oral History Summer Institute. More of Hardy's and others' writing on these works and others can be found here: Aural History, The Digital Revolution, and the Making of I Can Almost See the Lights of Home: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137322029_4 “Authoring in Sound: Aural History, Radio, and the Digital Revolution,” The Oral History Reader, 2nd edition, editors Rob Perks and Alistair Thomson, (Routledge, 2006): 393-406. “Oral History in Sound and Moving Image Documentaries,” (with Pamela Dean) Handbook of Oral History, editors Thomas Charlton et. al., (AltaMira Press, 2006): 510-62. Reprinted in Thinking About Oral History: Theories and Applications, (AltaMira Press, 2008). Painting in Sound: Aural History and Audio Art,” Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue. Marta Kurkowska-Budzan and Krysztof Zamorski, eds. (John Benjamins Publishing, 2009): 147-67 https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/hist_facpub/14/ Oral History in the Digital Age: https://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/about/authors/hardy/

This week we're featuring a super interesting conversation with Eleanor McDowall, creator of Radio Atlas, about the world of the radio feature and the artistry of audio works that aren't in English. 

Note: this week's episode is a video podcast because it is a celebration of audio subtitles.  You'll need to experience it on a platform that supports video files. This week we're sharing a choice work from our new collection celebrating ten years of Radio Atlas, an English-language home for subtitled audio from around the world. A place to hear inventive documentaries, dramas and works of sound art that have been made in languages you don’t necessarily speak.  Radio Atlas has subtitled stories from over 30 countries, and has been an instrumental part of audio festivals and awards since its inception (and it's won several awards itself).   We're sharing one feature from the collection today: The Woman on the Ice produced by Rikke Houd for Third Ear in 2014.  A young woman walks out onto the ice in Greenland, under a full moon, and disappears.  It's haunting, super compelling and will reshape your expectations for documentary.    ********* Original Series Credits from Radio Atlas:  Produced by Rikke Houd for Third Ear (11th March 2014) “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 

Today we share a prescient work by Ross Sutherland from his long running, award winning show Imaginary Advice.  It's a darkly funny spiral and a fantastic listen.   ******* S.E.I.N.F.E.L.D. originally aired in 2016 on Imaginary Advice.  It was written, produced and voiced by Ross Sutherland and a robot voice.