Category Short form 2024

1. Can We Come Carol?

Country: Canada

Category: Short Form

Title: Can We Come Carol?

Company: Mira Burt-Wintonick

Author: Mira Burt-Wintonick

Producer: Mira Burt-Wintonick

Director: Mira Burt-Wintonick

Sound engineer: Mira Burt-Wintonick

Language:English

Length: 09:19

Summary

A Ukrainian singing group in Canada celebrates loved ones through traditional winter songs as war continues in their homeland. These songs have been passed down via oral tradition for hundreds and hundreds of years, remnants of pre-Christian Slavic spirituality. This ancient singing ritual is filled with new importance, as Ukrainians fight to hold on to their traditions and to their right to exist. These melodies and lyrics of past generations shine a light towards a brighter future.

2. The Last Laugh

Country: Canada & France

Category: Short Form

Title: The Last Laugh

Company: Neil Sandell

Author: Neil Sandell

Producer: Neil Sandell

Director: Neil Sandell

Sound engineer: Neil Sandell

Language: English

Length: 09:40

Summary

Beset by personal troubles, the author searches for respite. He dives into an archive of early sound recordings. He listens randomly, sampling everything: foxtrots, art song, Schubert. It doesn’t matter. He’s there to lose himself. Occasionally he happens upon something sublime. Then one night, he stumbles upon a quirky genre – novelty records about laughing. This leads him to reflect on the laughter in his own life. “The Last Laugh” is a love story. It is also a meditation on growing old; on what is fleeting in life and what lasts. The author uses old, scratchy records as his point of departure. For most of history, musical performance was ephemeral. The sound of young Mozart at the keyboard vanished with the final note. Recording technology arrived in time to preserve artists like Heifetz -- a gift, to be sure. Yet, the essence of listening to live music – the experience of being there in the room – eludes the capture of technology. So too, what we treasure in people. A touch, a scent, and for the author, the duet of love and laughter. They remain as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke. They can be described, remembered, and sometimes, recorded. Is it ever enough? Source material: The sound archive of the US Library of Congress comprises 3.5 million recordings stretching 110 years into the past. Thousands of these works have been digitized for listening online. The selections in “The Last Laugh” date from 1917 to 1952.

3. The Ship Sails On

Country: Croatia

Category: Short Form

Title: La nave partira

Title in English: The Ship Sails On

Company: Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) / Croatian Radio (HR)

Author(s): Hrvoje Korbar, Marija Pečnik Kvesić

Producer: Adriana Kramarić

Director: Hrvoje Korbar

Sound engineer: Marija Pečnik Kvesić

Other key staff: Actors: Maruška Aras, Rok Juričić Composers: Sara Jakopović, Lovro Stipčević

Language: Croatian, Italian

Length: 09:53"

Summary

We easily recall the images, smells and tastes that had 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 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.

4.  Romeo and[roid] Juliet

Country: Georgia

Category: Short Form

Title: Romeo and[roid] Juliet

Company: Mamuka Magularia

Author: Mamuka Magularia

Producer: Mamuka Magularia

Director: Mamuka Magularia

Sound engineer: Mamuka Magularia

Language: N/A (Ars Acustica)

Length: 05:00

Summary

Romeo And[roid] Juliet This is a story of Romeo and Juliet, told with cell phones. Could they have been saved, if these tiny little Androids were around? This is the question...

5.  Circumstances

Country: Germany

Category: Short Form

Title: Circumstances

Company: Werner Cee

Author(s): Werner Cee (music) / Bettina Obrecht (translations)

Producer: Werner Cee

Director: Werner Cee

Sound engineer: Werner Cee

Language: 8 different languages

Length: 07:00

Summary

Werner Cee’s first encounter with a Spanish Black Friday procession happened accidentally, but it would prove immensely inspiring for his work. He recorded sound material from the procession, later asked Peter Brötzmann’s for an expressive sax improvisation to create a powerful, archaic soundtrack for texts he chose from personal reports written by persons in a situation of terrible unrest.

Original sounds turn into abstract sound images; realistic scenes emerge from electroacoustic cosmoses - consistently broken by text quotations, easy to understand at first, but increasingly merging into the musical and atmospheric sound texture, with the different languages allowing room for unlimited associations.

The eight text fragments are taken from reports written by displaced people in World War 2. They were not chosen for spectacular events or atrocities recounted; rather, we seem to take a glimpse at a normal, everyday life – but something is terribly wrong. Werner Cee asked persons from eight nations to read these sentences in their own languages to focus on the universality of human suffering in wars that indiscriminately destroy what we took for granted: the right to live a normal life in a familiar world.

The text fragments are increasingly and intricately interwoven to emphasize the sounds of human speech and voice, to erase unambiguous or local references.

As a manuscript, here are the text fragments used in the piece in their English translation, listed in order of their appearance.

6.  The Dutar Maestro

Country: Iran

Category: Short Form

Title: استاد دوتار

Title in English: The Dutar Maestro

Company: Morteza Namazi

Author: Morteza Namazi

Producer: Morteza Namazi

Director: Morteza Namazi

Sound engineer: Ameneh Taghvaei

Language: Farsi

Length: 09:14

Summary

This short audio documentary is about the life of Osman Mohammad Parast also known as "Osman Khafi” who was the Maestro of Dutar and whose inspiring music changed many people’s lives. As mentioned by his son and daughter as well as his friends in the documentary, whenever he played the Dutar in fundraising ceremonies for building schools, everyone would be inspired by the music so much that during his lifespan he managed to build around 960 schools in Iran. This is what made Osman unique not only in Iran, but in the whole world, that a Japanese filmmaker came to Iran to record a movie with him. Dutar is a traditional Iranian long-necked two-stringed lute found in Iran and Central Asia. Its name comes from the Persian word for "two strings". Dutar is also very popular and important instrument among the people of Khorasan, where Osman was born and raised. He was born in 1928 in the city of Khaf, one of the districts of Khorasan Razavi. His father was against playing music. But after he saw Osman singing and playing poetry about Prophet Muhammad, he changed his mind. Osman says about the beginning of his activities in the field of music: "Since I was twelve or thirteen years old, I played the dutar days and nights after work. I devoted myself to spiritual meditation, and I never had a teacher in this field. Dutar (two strings) means love. It is a calm and gentle instrument that relaxes both the musician and the people who are interested in this instrument."

7. On Ulysses' Incredible Voyage

Country: Italy

Category: Short Form

Title: On Ulysses' Incredible Voyage

Company: M Cristina Marras

Author: M Cristina Marras

Producer: M Cristina Marras

Director: M Cristina Marras

Sound engineer: M Cristina Marras

Language: English (with some Italian words)

Length: 05:39

Summary

Dante's Holy Comedy consists of three parts, but what we all remember is Hell. Among the many characters encountered in Hell, while reading the Holy Comedy as a student, Ulysses is one of those that most impressed me, and I identified with his spirit of rebellion against rules and his passion for discovery. Reading the story of Ulysses today, I still love it, but I cannot avoid thinking that behind every hero there is a multitude of enablers, people who must take care of the dirty, hidden, unsatisfactory, and unheroic daily tasks, so that the destined hero can take his masculine place among the other masculine heroes. For this reason, I decided to tell Ulysses' heroic voyage through the eyes of one of those enablers, making her a woman in love who doesn’t regret having followed her hero to Hell, at the cost of hiding her true self, because her love for Ulysses was second only to her love for discovery and adventure. This is the story of Ulysses' voyage narrated through the eyes of a woman who disguised herself as a man to be allowed to follow the man and the adventures that she loved.

8. This is a village, though as it wasn’t here…

Country: Poland

Category: Short Form

Title: Wieś...a jakby jej nie było

Title in English: This is a village, though as it wasn’t here…

Company: Polish Radio Białystok

Author(s): Alicja Pietruczuk i Aleksandra Sadokierska

Producer(s): Polish Radio Białystok

Director(s): Alicja Pietruczuk i Aleksandra Sadokierska

Sound engineer(s): Aleksandra Sadokierska, Alicja Pietruczuk

Language: Polish

Length: 09:50

Summary

Only few farms and even less farmers. Nowy Dwór in Bakałarzewo county has a name, long traditions and a village head, but according to geodetic documents it doesn’t exist. The land of the village belongs formally to a neighboring village Nieszki. The village was liquidated by Germans during 2nd World War because there was no one, who would agree to become a village head collaborating with the enemy. Forty years ago the name of the village was officially restored, a village head was chosen, but no one arrange the documents and thus, right now, as one of the villagers says, Nowy Dwór is out of scope of satellites. The mayor of Bakałarzewo, who is an enthusiast of local history promises, that he will complete all the necessary formalities so that the village is restored properly and according to the law. This is what the villagers want too, though they admit the village depopulates. Less and less young people want to stay and take care of the farm or breed animals. They educate and prefer to stay in the city. Farmers don’t have anyone who would take over they farms that have been built for many generations. By defending their identity the defend their traditional, countryside way of living in a local community, which they associate with cooperation, mutual help and respect and sensitivity to the needs of their neighbours.

9. Once upon a time in Belgrade

Country: Serbia

Category: Short Form

Title: Bilo jednom u Beogradu

Title in English: Once upon a time in Belgrade

Company: Snežana Ristić & Radonja leposavić

Author(s): Snežana Ristić & Radonja Leposavić

Producer(s):

Snežana Ristić& Radonja Leposavić

Director(s): Snežana Ristić & Radonja Leposavić

Sound engineer(s):Snežana Ristić & Radonja Leposavić

Language: Serbian

Length: 09:26

Summary

The 1920’s in Belgrade, as elsewhere, were the crazy twenties. Speed became the key word. People listened to jazz, danced modern dances, the city grew and turned more European. Art associations and avant-garde movements were founded everywhere, manifestos were written, periodicals were published... At the beginning of 1924, the Film Lovers’ Club was formed; on June 1st young journalists, actors and painters began filming the movie God Forbid or Kachaks in Topčider (kachak is a Turkish word meaning outlaw, Albanian guerrilla fight- er; Topčider is a park in Belgrade). This burlesque by Branimir Ćosić was to be directed by the futurist Boško Tokin and the dadaist Dragan Aleksić, but the film never progressed beyond the initial stage. Partly due to lack of money, but more on account of unfavourable political circumstances, the actual shooting lasted only one day. Whatever was shot perished in a fire soon afterwards. Once upon a time in Belgrade is an attempt at reconstructing these events by radiophonic means. Using the facilities for digital sound processing at our disposal, we improved the sound quality of archive recordings, but it is still far from perfect. For the sake of sound coherence, we adjusted the contemporary recordings to the old ones, but the noises and the voice deformations applied have a symbol- ic function as well.

10. A Mirror

Country: UK

Category: Short Form

Title: A Mirror

Company: Falling Tree Productions

Producer: Eleanor McDowall

Sound engineer: Mike Woolley

Other key staff: Steve Urquhart (Narrator)

Language: English

Length: 05:20

Summary

A Mirror is a miniature gathering storm in sound, framed around the surprising poetry of the Beaufort scale - a system designed to measure the force of the wind. The scale was originally created in 1805 but its current wording was devised by a committee of engineers in 1906, working across the British Isles. "Sea like a mirror..." "Whistling heard in telegraph wires..." "Small trees in leaf begin to sway..." The scale originally only went up to 12, ending with hurricane-force winds and the one word description, "Devastation". But since 1946 a further five categories have been added. The scale would be most familiar to British radio listeners through the nightly broadcast of the Shipping Forecast - a weather report for the seas which has been broadcast on the BBC since 1925. In 'A Mirror' you hear the former BBC Radio 4 continuity announcer, Steve Urquhart, who read the Shipping Forecast many times on air, reading out the scale. 'A Mirror' was originally produced for an episode of the short documentary series Short Cuts on the theme ‘The Tipping Point’.