In The Dark Bristol: Rewinding Time - Connecting Through Cassette

Alfie Skinner (UK 2021)

11 min

In The Dark Bristol - New Producers

A social history documentary bringing the 19-year-old Producer closer to finding out what his parents were like when they were his own age.

Going through their boxes of old records and cassettes, Alfie discovers long-treasured taped voice recordings, made by his Mum and Dad for each other in 1996.

Alfie’s parents met when his Dad was 19 and his Mum was 18. Just months after getting together, they were geographically separated, when his Mum went to teach at a school in the rural areas of Zimbabwe on her Gap Year, leaving his Dad back in Bristol.

The village where Alfie’s Mum was staying was really cut off - with no electricity, running water or phone-lines. Without being able to call or email, to stay connected, his parents’ recorded spoken letters for each other on cassette tapes and sent them by post, never imagining that anyone else would be listening to them 25 years later!

Curious about the technology that Alfie’s parents used to keep in touch, he and his girlfriend use isolation in lockdown to experiment with making their own tapes to communicate with each other.

Despite his excruciating embarrassment at having to listen to his parent’s recorded love letters to make the programme, Alfie comes to realise the important role that the tapes played in their relationship and, in a way, if they didn’t exist, then he might not either!

Produced by Alfie Skinner

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