Lights Out

"I noticed that language seems to fail us. How do you write about the foundations of our existence? That is how mythology enters very naturally into the story, because history is about ideas, religions, empires, wars and culture. Mythology is about the fundaments. Sun, moon, wind, oceans, great floods and tragic gods... We are living in mythological times, where we are shaking the fundaments." - A...

Documentary adventures that invite a closer listen. For generations, queer people have moved to London from more conservative parts of the UK, in search of community and to live as their authentic selves. Now, with housing so unstable, queer people are among the marginalised communities for which homelessness is on the rise. They continue to come to London now to find their place, but the trade of...

Documentary adventures that invite a closer listen. Sahid has spent years on a relentless journey. Crossing international borders, he has confronted the harrowing realities of human trafficking, slavery, and rafting across the Mediterranean Sea. But his journey isn't over yet - Sahid is at risk of being sent back to the first European Union country he arrived in, a country where he was unlawfully...

Documentary adventures that invite a closer listen. Infamous during the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s for the recklessness of her activism and her multiple prison sentences (as heard in Lights Out: Greenham Convictions), Lyn Barlow now lives quietly in Somerset. She spends her time making textile art, huge tapestries that document the turbulence of her childhood in care and the struggles o...

“I was well aware of this synchronicity: that Cornwall was going onto lithium, or what I prefer to call ‘lithifying’, just as I was ‘delithifying’, or coming off it. This wasn’t an accidentally aligned pairing of incidents. I’d planned it that way.” In 2022, Laura Grace Simpkins made two big life changes. She decided to stop taking lithium (a medication she was prescribed for her mental health) ju...

“Should we delete the sex tape?” Should we get rid of the crime scene photographs? How do I find a true image of my mum amidst the recordings, fragments and images she left behind?" Exploring an archive of home videos, photographs, memories and news reports, Talia Augustidis reflects on how we choose to remember someone. Told through five chapters, each part focuses on a single image of her mum, w...

“Somewhere between the narrow entry of Who I am and What I seem to be, lies a vast and nameless place.” In this transmission, Axel Kacoutié discovers a new sense of self in the cosmologies, concepts and realities of queer and indigenous folks. What are the links between gender expression and our relationship with the Earth? How does it destabilise colonial and capitalist imaginations of what we’re...

Four people recount their involvement with “county lines” - gangs that exploit children and vulnerable adults to sell drugs around the UK. Underneath their stories lies a series of unspoken, unanswered questions. Who gets to decide the boundary between criminal and victim? Why do we view 'county lines' through the lens of crime and punishment? And how well does the system support individuals and f...

Having devoted decades of their lives to fighting for a better world, three activists in their 70s reflect on keeping going, hope and despair as the year turns - while a retired clergyman and his wife explore what’s drawn them to activism in their 60s. Featuring Leila Hassan Howe, Angie Zelter, Linda Clair and Bill and Rosemary White, alongside radio clips from BBC news programmes, Outlook and Mat...

A man, a Mouse and a morse key: the story of a radio amateur in Kyiv as the Russian invasion unfolds. When his wife and two children flee Kyiv to escape the war, Volodymyr Gurtovy (call sign US7IGN) stays behind in their apartment with only his radios and the family hamster, Mouse, for company. Before the war, he used to go deep into the pine forests, spinning intricate webs of treetop antennas us...

It's 40 years this month since 30,000 women 'embraced the base' at RAF Greenham Common, Berkshire in protest at the proposed siting of cruise missiles there. For some of them, the Women's Peace Camp became home and the RAF base the scene of countless actions, as political convictions led inevitably to arrests, court appearances and imprisonment. Lyn Barlow served something between 15 and 20 senten...

Across the course of a single day, a documentary-maker hosts an open-call audition for subjects to star in her next project. Accounts and Accountability offers a dive into the ethics of buying and selling true stories. With music composed by Eliza Niemi Sound Recording by Fivel Rothberg Assistant Producers: Kristine White, Kyle Damiao, Jose Salazar and Emma Rose Brown Special thanks to Sean Hanley...

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen.