[Audio] Spotlight on Czech Radio

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There’s nothing more fun than making new radio friends! That’s what I learned when, in October, I was invited to go to the Czech Republic for the Jihlava Documentary Festival – a celebration of creative documentary.

For the first time, the festival had dedicated a series of slots to radio documentary which were curated by the team at Český Rozhlas (Czech Radio). On the last day of the festival I was given the task of presenting a selection of English language audio, In The Dark-style, which was kind of interesting as I was warned that not everyone would speak English. Although the main feature was subtitled in Czech (Katie Burnigham’s lovely Heel, Toe, Step Together) it was fun to find warm-up pieces that were sound-tastic enough to bridge the language divide. John Wynne, Charles Spearin, Radiolab, I salute you!!

But apart from having the chance to play some of my favorite audio, one of the real highlights of the trip for me was definitely learning more about Czech radio and meeting the team there – Eva Nachmilnerova, Edita Kudlacova and Helena Eliasova – true kindred spirits. There we are, “working” in the pub (below).

While feature-making is still in its infancy in the Czech Republic, it’s really great to see how Czech producers are finding ways of exploring sound and being creative with their aural storytelling… even if it means it has to happen in their spare time. With little institutional recognition for feature-making, it is falling on the shoulders of people like Eva, Edita and Helena to champion the cause, and as Eva has just been promoted to Head of Documentaries (congratulations Eva!) there is hope for the future.

A graduate of the EBU Masterschool where she was mentored by Edwin Brys, Eva’s passionate about feature-making and determined to get more feature-style radio on the air.

While I was there she gave me a brief introduction to Czech Radio, a few names to listen out for, and shared some of her aspirations for the future.

The visit has definitely inspired us to hold a Czech In the Dark – stay tuned for more on that – but until then you can enjoy a taster of a rare beast – English-language Czech radio. This piece by created by one of Eva’s favorite producers, Jiri Slavicinsky. It is the piece she mentions near the end of our chat (below), created under the mentorship of Jiri’s hero (and early ITD curator) Chris Brookes. It’s called Last Summer in Grand Bruit.

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We hope to get the girls over in person later in the year but until then you can have a listen to this brief chat with Eva while we hid outside one of the screening rooms:

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And don’t worry, we’re winding up the subtitling machine and will bring you lots of Czech language pieces later in the year!

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