Love Radio: Web Documentary

April 7th 2014 marked exactly 20 years since the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide that left 100,000s of innocent people dead. It also signaled the beginning of Love Radio: Episodes of Love & Hate, a new transmedia documentary by Anoek Steketee and Eefje Blankevoort that aims to explore the subject of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. Submarine Channel acts as a media partner in the project.

Consisting of a web documentary, mobile tap stories for smartphone users and an exhibition in Amsterdam’s FOAM Museum (from 11th July to 7th September), Love Radio straddles the thin line between fact and fiction. At first glance it tells a linear, almost fairy-tale narrative, based around the radio soap Musekeweya (‘New Dawn’). But a closer look reveals the complex reality. While in the soap happy endings predominate, reconciliation in real life is rather more intransigent. After the gruesome killings, how can perpetrators and victims live with and love each other?

Love Radio tells the story of the soap’s creators, its actors and audience through film, photography and text. It is a story of the impact of mass media and the thin line between fact and fiction, violence and reconciliation, guilt and innocence. It’s is a transmedia documentary about the process of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. It consists of a web documentary, mobile Tap stories and an exhibition.

Love Radio combines film with photography, audio, text and archive material. Using fragments from the soap, portraits of the creators, fan mail from listeners and images of the magical ‘guilty’ landscape, it gradually becomes clear that ‘the truth’ does not exist – only different versions of reality. The first episode of Love Radio premiered on April 7th, and new episodes will be released every two weeks across 100 days – the same length of time as the Rwandan Genocide 20 years ago.

On April 2nd, there will be a preview of first episode of Love Radio at Humanity House in the Hague, Netherlands. Scott Straus an (expert on genocide in Rwanda and author) will give a lecture with the theme ‘20 Years after the Genocide in Rwanda, where do we stand?’ and  university teacher Felix Ndahinda (Tilburg University) will reflect on Straus’ lecture.

To coincide with the launch of Love Radio on April 7th, the makers Eefje Blankevoort and Anoek Steketee, producer Sara Kolster and designers Kummer & Herrman will be present at Amsterdam’s Pakhuis de Zwijger for Fotokroniek: describing the motivation and challenges behind telling the story of Love Radio. You can RSVP to the event here.

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Credits

Eefje Blankevoort (Montreal, 1978) is a co-founder of the journalism production company Prospektor. She writes articles and books and makes (multimedia) documentaries. She has published Stiekem kan hier alles (‘Secretly every­thing is possible here’), about Iran, De Vluchtelingenjackpot (‘The Refugee Jackpot’, with photographer Karijn Kakebeeke) and Dream City (with photographer Anoek Steketee). The interactive music documentary Hidden Wounds (IDFA Doclab, Reflecting Images 2013) and the two-part radio documentary Men don’t cry (OVT, VPRO), about veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, were recently released.

Anoek Steketee (The Netherlands, 1974) studied photo­graphy at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and the Post-St. Joost in Breda. Her work has been featured at national and international festivals and exhibitions in Amsterdam, Madrid, Boston, Prague, Berlin, Lagos, China and New Zealand, solo exhibitions in the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and more recently in ROSPHOTO State Museum in St Petersburg and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.

Love Radio was developed in close collaboration with Sara Kolster, designer and producer specialised in digital storytelling, Martijn Eerens, Thijs Gadiot and Thomas Lievestro, programmers, and design agency Kummer & Herrman. Submarine Channel acts as a media partner in the project.

You can follow Love Radio, stay up-to-date with the documentary episodes and more by following the Love Radio Twitter, Love Radio Facebook and by signing up for the mailing list over at www.loveradio-rwanda.org