Radio and the documentary imagination: thirty years of experiment, innovation, and revelation

A renaissance occurred from the late 1960s in the art of documentary and feature production in radio, especially from within the major public broadcasters of Europe. Surprisingly, the pioneering work of this little commented-upon group of accomplished artisans finds its most immediate parallels not in radio but film culture, particularly in the auteur, nouvelle vague and cinma-vrit movements of the time. The new acoustic documentary-feature project suggests a radio new wave: a new art of wild sound recording freed from script and studio, and made possible by the advent of portable recorders, microphones and a strong infusion of 1968 zeitgeist.