Every October, the Prix Europa competition is held in Berlin’s Haus des Rundfunks, bringing together the best Europe has to offer in radio, television, and new media. Sound-rich radio features from the 2011 competition will be heard and discussed, including excerpts from My Name is Frédéric (Damien Magnette, ACSR and Radio Silence, Belgium), Ladies of the Manor: Scenes from a Marriage of Convenience (Eva Roither, ORF1, Austria), Optimism (Snežana Ristić, Radonja Leposavić, Radio Belgrade 2, Serbia), and Portsall (Jean-Guy Coulange, RTBF, Belgium).

Please RSVP to (202) 289-1200, ext. 166; or rsvp@washington.goethe.org.

What did they listen to in 1920?
Recently, Bill Gilcher (director of media projects North America, Goethe-Institut Washington) converted his great-grandmother’s 78rpm record collection (dating from 1908-1929) to MP3 files. Not a large collection, but it gave him insights into the kind of thing that a middle-class family in upstate New York liked to listen to: country music (“Father’s a Drunkard and Mother is Dead”), hymns and spirituals (including early recordings of the Fisk Jubilee Quartet), and musicals and operettas (“No No Nanette”).

Come listen to a selection of these recordings — and bring along your own to share. What did they listen to? And what does that tell us?

No charge. RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 169 or rsvp@washington.goethe.org

More: www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/ver/en8113131v.htm

Public radio is usually scripted and produced in order to be perfectly clear, understandable, and transparent to a home audience. But some broadcasts and features are intended for other audiences, or are heard in a multinational context.

This leads us to ask: Can “otherness” in radio help us improve our own audio work? And what can be gleaned through the “barrier” of language, culture, and format differences?

In this Hear Now event, producer Alex van Oss and guests reach into their personal audio collections to present favorite examples of “other” works–from other times, lands, producers, and cultures–that continue to provoke and inspire.

Please RSVP to (202) 289-1200, ext. 169; or rsvp@washington.goethe.org.

Since meeting at public radio station KNAU-Flagstaff, AZ in 1999, media artists and documentary radio producers Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler have worked together. Ann Heppermann is a Rosalynn Carter for Mental Journalism Fellow working on a documentary about preteen anorexia for Ms. magazine and NPR, and is on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. Kara Oehler is a 2011-2012 Radcliffe-Film Study Center Fellow, co-creator of Zeega, an open-source platform for collaboratively designing, producing, and publishing multimedia projects, and co-founder of metaLAB at Harvard.

At Hear Now they will discuss how experimental collaborations with composers, technologists, and others can lead to new forms of documentary.

Based in New York City and Boston, Ann and Kara’s stories and documentaries have aired nationally and internationally on programs including: This American Life, Morning Edition, Radio Lab, Re:Sound, and Marketplace. They have won a Peabody and numerous other awards.
Please RSVP to (202) 289-1200, ext. 169; or rsvp@washington.goethe.org.

One of the most enjoyable radio events going is the annual Prix Europa, held in October in Berlin’s historic Haus des Rundfunks (Broadcasting House). In addition to radio, one can attend all-day sessions on film, television, or computer communications. Awards are handed out at a big bash afterward..It’s all free, too–you just have to get yourself to Berlin.
Bill Gilcher will present excerpts from such sound-rich Prix Europe features as: “Who Knew Lolita? / Qui a connu Lolita?” (ARTE Radio, France), “The Runners” (RTÉ, Ireland), “Nothing Less than an Orgasm / Inte mindre enn en orgasme” (NRK, Norway), “The Secret of the Weapons Ship MV Faina / Das Geheimnis des Waffenschiffes ‘Faina’” (Germany), and “I Call You Sometimes / Jag ringer dig ibland” (SR, Sweden).
The Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh Street, NW (near the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro, Red Line), Washington, D.C. 20001. Map Please RSVP to (202) 289-1200, ext. 168; or rsvp@washington.goethe.org.