Off-air recordings for week 13-19 February 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Monday 15th

Channel 4 - Dispatches: Kids Don't Count - "In 2009 more than one in five children left primary school having failed to grasp the basic maths skills required by the national curriculum. In a two-part special, Dispatches asks why and how are we failing Britain's children when it comes to maths.
Dispatches follows a class of final-year pupils at Barton Hill Primary School in Bristol as their staff adopt a radical approach to teaching, in a bid to improve the maths ability of these children before they head off to secondary school.
The problem couldn't be more urgent. Research shows that failing to grasp the fundamentals of maths at primary school leaves only a one in ten chance of catching up by the age of 16... "

BBC4 - Storyville: The Most Dangerous Man In America - "In 1971, leading Vietnam War strategist Daniel Ellsberg concluded that the war was based on decades of lies. He leaked 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to the New York Times, a daring act of conscience that led directly to Watergate, President Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam War."

Tuesday 16th

More4 - True Stories: Which Way Home? - "The Oscar-nominated Which Way Home follows unaccompanied child migrants as they journey through Mexico on a freight train they call 'The Beast', hoping to reach the USA.
Rebecca Cammisa's film tracks the stories of children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year-old Hondurans who are desperately trying to reach their families in Minnesota; Jose, a ten-year-old El Salvadoran who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention centre; and Kevin, a canny, streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, whose mother hopes that he will reach New York City and send money back to his family.
These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the stories most people never hear about: the invisible ones."

Thursday 18th

Channel 4 - My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding - "
Ancient traditions meet modern fashions in an ostentatious culture clash in the world of 21st-century gypsy and traveller weddings.
Gaining rare access to this fascinating and often misunderstood community, Cutting Edge uses the prism of the weddings to reveal a culture where brides compete to have the biggest dress but having children out of wedlock is still taboo and divorce is unheard of.
Considered 'on the shelf' at 20, many girls in Gypsy and Traveller communities get married soon after their 16th birthday with the support of their family.
The weddings are visual spectacles: girls parade into church in enormous dresses that sometimes weigh more than the bride herself. Although the women look sexually provocative there is a tradition of premarital chastity that is increasingly unusual in Britain today.
This is a community that lives alongside but detached from mainstream society. It is a community of contrasts, living by centuries-old religious and cultural traditions but at the same time embracing the gaudier extremes of the celebrity- and fashion-obsessed times in which we live."


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* This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.