In The Dark What’s New: Dear Mother

Jerry Birch (US 2024)

6 min

A contemplation on life as a son clears his mother's flat.

Produced by Jerry Birch during the In The Dark Short Feature course, taught by Nina Garthwaite.

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In The Dark What’s New: The Lost Son

Julianne Chandler (US 2024)

11 min

A father's 27-year search for his son, who was taken from him at birth.

Produced by Julianne Chandler.

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Where is my Mind?

Molly-Rose Crossley, (UK 2024)

MRC Audio · WHERE IS MY MIND

11 min

What is it like to living with a condition which turns your mind against you? Having thoughts that go against your morals, ethics and heart? This condition is called POCD, which stands for Pure-OCD. It’s the sibling of the more popularly known OCD and comes with its own unique set of struggles and traits which can be incredibly distressing for those who have it.

We have spoken to someone who has lived with this condition all their life. Most recently the obsessions made her believe she had killed her best friend, who passed away from cancer.

How has she overcome this and what does the future hold when your mind can be your worst enemy?

Produced by Molly-Rose Crossley

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Crush Tango

Eloïse Bertil (UK, 2024)

4 min

A story about a crush at a rooftop bar during a solo trip. This short audio piece explores romantic body language cues, examining the intricate choreography of a girl-meets-boy scenario and its translatability across cultures. Blending personal experiences with fictional elements, the narrative contemplates flirting as a universal language, where every gesture (or move) carries significant meaning—or at least, one hopes it does.

Produced by Eloïse Bertil around a field recording from the Cities & Memory sound database for their Spring Project.

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The Ecco: Red of Visibility

Phoebe McIndoe (DE 2024)

7 min

Growing up I went to a catholic primary school where the school emblem and colour was red. We had a visiting doctor who would see us in the head mistress' study without our red uniforms on. In this red space I had my first experience of bad touch. Or as I now call it, sexual assault. This piece is an attempt, years later, to explore and reclaim the colour red.

THE ECCO is an international non-commercial initiative designed to tug at the boundaries of the world of audio storytelling, journalism, and documentary work. We bring together talents in different parts of the world — journalists, sound designers, audio producers, sound artists, & writers— all united by a common goal: to push themselves and each other out of their work-related comfort zones and explore the different shapes audio documentaries can take, where they may intersect with art and what the impact of such playful exploration can have.

This was made during an immersive retreat where a curated group of talents collaborate, experiment, and support each other in crafting audio projects that are as diverse as they are profound

Produced by Phoebe McIndoe

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The Ecco: Wasting Time

Yannic Hannebohn (DE 2024)

9 min

Yannic’s biggest fear is to relax at home. And so he did the impossible.

THE ECCO is an international non-commercial initiative designed to tug at the boundaries of the world of audio storytelling, journalism, and documentary work. We bring together talents in different parts of the world — journalists, sound designers, audio producers, sound artists, & writers— all united by a common goal: to push themselves and each other out of their work-related comfort zones and explore the different shapes audio documentaries can take, where they may intersect with art and what the impact of such playful exploration can have.

This was made during an immersive retreat where a curated group of talents collaborate, experiment, and support each other in crafting audio projects that are as diverse as they are profound

Produced by Yannic Hannebohn

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The Ecco: The Vibrator

Allison Behringer (DE 2024)

10 min

What happens when an old woman and a young woman walk into a sex toy shop?

THE ECCO is an international non-commercial initiative designed to tug at the boundaries of the world of audio storytelling, journalism, and documentary work. They bring together talents in different parts of the world — journalists, sound designers, audio producers, sound artists, & writers— all united by a common goal: to push themselves and each other out of their work-related comfort zones and explore the different shapes audio documentaries can take, where they may intersect with art and what the impact of such playful exploration can have.

This was made during an immersive retreat where a curated group of talents collaborate, experiment, and support each other in crafting audio projects that are as diverse as they are profound

Written and Produced by Allison Behringer
Voice performance and script advising by Kelly Elsasser
Advising and story editing by Jamin Bauomy, Luisa Beck, Lena Von Holt, Phoebe McIndoe and Sara Zarreh
Music by Dara Hirsch
Mastering by Jeff Emtman.

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All My Friends Are Turning Into Stars

Amber Devereux (UK 2023)

9 min

Originally commissioned for BBC Radio 4's Short Cuts, All My Friends Are Turning Into Stars is an exploration of chrononormativity, the idea that we all follow the same timeline, and what it means to live in opposition to it. It is a journey through space and time by way of Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, the existential angst of turning 30, an astronomer in Chile, and a slightly unnerving 1950s public information film about how to be a person.

Produced by Amber Devereux
Featuring Dr Matthew Temple, Research Fellow, Universidad Diego Portales, additional voices by Lou Sutcliffe and Alessa Catterall, featuring quotes from De Profundus by Oscar Wilde, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and In A Queer Time And Place by Jack Halberstam.

With thanks to Axel Kacoutie

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Landed - The Family Farm

Farmerama / Col Gordon and Katie Revell (UK 2021)

30 min

What if we’ve been getting this wrong?” Col Gordon is a farmer’s son from the Scottish Highlands. After a decade away, he’s finally returned to the place that he loves: his family farm. Now, he’s eager to start realising his vision for an agroecological future: a future in which rural areas are alive with culture, many more people work on the land, farms operate in sympathy with nature, and nutritious food is available to everyone in society. But now that he’s back, Col’s starting to wonder whether this vision can be achieved within the existing family farm model. Increasingly, it seems the odds are stacked against farms like his.

Many are struggling to survive, let alone to employ people and deliver good food affordably to local communities. As older farmers retire without succession plans, and their land is amalgamated into large industrial operations, the future of the small family farm looks pretty bleak. As he wrangles with all of this, Col stumbles across something that throws his vision – and his very understanding of farming – into doubt. What does it mean to say that “The family farm is a colonial concept”? And might this jarring idea be the key to understanding the problem – as well as its potential solutions?

Produced by Col Gordon and Katie Revell
Executive Producer Abby Rose
Music by Dagger Gordon and Col Gordon

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Generative Engine

Joan Schuman (US 2022)

10 min

Sounds and stories, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.

Along a series of voiced ‘book pages’ echoing from Joan’s creative sonic archive of more than 20 years ago, comes an intersection generated with material lifted up from the unconscious. Collisions of narrative are reconsidered along the timescape of dreams. It’s very much of the now and of a past that appears in the present. What is spoken and whirled emits a barely linear story accessing the cycles of death, but also the collective symbology of end-times and freedom.

This melding is driven by an energetic stirring of borrowed lines from the poet-theorist, Nicole Brossard, and the theorist-philosopher Gilles Deleuze—from texts produced in the early 1970s (A Book by Brossard and Negotiations by Deleuze). These ‘pages’ comprised a sonic engine originally played in a gallery space and ceded over to the machine’s shuffle mode. Now, in present time, both a past and a future unfurl. The ship of the night floats through turgid waters. A neat continuum of story is interrupted within itself swirling like an invertebrate, horizontal and regenerate. The underworld knows no time. Sounds, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.

Vocals + mix: Joan Schuman
Texts + Words: Nicole Brossard + Gilles Deleuze
Composition: Joan Schuman derived from Creative Commons licensed freesound

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