Tuesday 27 July 2010

Off-air recordings for week 31 July - 6 August 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 2nd August

Channel 4 - Our Drugs War - new 3-part series - "One in five British citizens have used class-A drugs. Focusing on Scotland - named by the UN as Europe's drug capital - the first episode shows the stark contrast between Edinburgh's rich city centre and its underprivileged estates, where up to 60 to 70 percent of the residents can be drug users.
Film-maker Angus Macqueen visits one such estate with two former users, who are now volunteers for anti-drug charity Crew. They show him how the drug trade operates on a day-to-day basis in front of - and often with the participation of - children, some as young as eight. While all social classes use drugs equally, 70% of addicts have left school by the age of 16 and 85% are unemployed.
The police fail to control supply - in Scotland seizing just one per cent of the heroin consumed - criminals make money, and demand only increases. With the advent of synthetic drugs like GBL, until recently quite legal and easily available online, banning and policing are becoming ever more random and ineffectual.
Angus meets parents whose children have died as a result of drug abuse. Suzanne Dyer's son Chris died from an addiction to GBL, a compound found in some industrial cleaners and widely used by clubbers. GBL became a popular 'dance' drug when GHB, another similar, and less potent, substance was banned.
John Arthur's charity, Crew, which supported Suzanne Dyer and her son, sees the obsession with the banning and classification of drugs as increasingly irrelevant to what is happening on the streets. John's not alone. Angus speaks to former government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt, who was famously sacked when he began to say in public that present policy is not based on scientific evidence."

BBC4 - Britain's Park Story - "The British invented them for the world, and they have been described as 'the lungs of the city - historian Dan Cruickshank reveals the history of our public parks.
Cruickshank travels the country to discover the evolution of the nation's urban public parks, a story of class, civic pride, changing fashions in sport and recreation which helps re-evaluate the amazing assets they are.
From their civic heyday in the 19th century to the neglect of the 1980s and their resurgence today, the documentary is a fascinating and entertaining history of an often-overlooked great British invention."

Tuesday 3rd

More4 - True Stories: Rough Aunties - "Kim Longinotto's critically acclaimed, Sundance-winning film follows the Bobbi Bears, a multiracial group of women based in Durban, South Africa who protect and shelter the child victims of sexual and physical abuse.
Many of them have suffered such abuse themselves and they call themselves the rough aunties both because of their blue collar background and because of their tactics, making sure the perpetrators of the attacks are prosecuted in the face of bureaucratic indifference. But as well as following the women as they accompany police on night raids, it also follows their own personal stories, including the assault on one member and a tragic family loss to another.
Their name comes from the toy bears they use to encourage their young victims to show the abuse they suffered, in the same way dolls are used in this country, by placing stickers to indicate where they were violated. Despite the tough subject matter, Rough Aunties is a positive, rewarding film."

Wednesday 4th

BBC2 - The Normans - new 3-part series - "In the first episode of this three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores how the Normans developed from a band of marauding Vikings into the formidable warriors who conquered England in 1066. He tells how the Normans established their new province of Normandy -'land of the northmen' - in northern France. They went on to build some of the finest churches in Europe and turned into an unstoppable force of Christian knights and warriors, whose legacy is all around us to this day."

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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.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Off-air recordings for week 24-30 July 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 26th

Channel 4 - Dispatches: Britain's Witch Children - "Dispatches goes undercover in some African churches in the UK, where evangelical pastors perpetuate a strong belief in witchcraft. They preach that some people are possessed by evil spirits, and that these spirits bring bad luck into the lives of others.
The only way to rid the possessed from the witchcraft spell and lift their curse is to 'deliver' them: a kind of exorcism that can be very traumatic. Some pastors charge significant sums of money to perform these deliverances.
Often it is children who are denounced as witches by these pastors, and this labelling can lead to the physical and emotional abuse of those children at the hands of their families. In extreme cases it has led to the deaths of some children.
In parts of Africa, branding a child a witch is now outlawed, but in Britain this practise is perfectly legal, despite the fact it can have horrific consequences.
Dispatches reveals just what goes on behind closed doors in these African churches, exposing the pastors who exploit the religious beliefs of the most vulnerable."

Channel 4 - The Hospital - new 5-part series - "The first episode of the second series focuses on Britain's sexual health. In just ten years the number of diagnosed new cases of sexually transmitted infections has doubled and sexual health services account for over £1billion of the NHS budget.
Lead consultant Rachael Jones and her team at the West London Centre for Sexual Health are tackling this sexual time bomb.
Chlamydia is the clinic's number one diagnosis. But Michael, 25, is dismissive: 'I thought everyone gets it. If you haven't had it, you're boring. It's almost like being brought into manhood,' he says.
And many in this generation don't use condoms, routinely taking risks. As 19-year-old Stacey says, 'if I have to put one on I'll put on one. If she's ok with it, I won't.'
Undetected and untreated, STIs can lead to infertility, cancer and even death. Yet staff at the clinic are not only coping with high numbers of patients, but also spend much of their time trying to make their young patients realise the dangers of STIs and the importance of practicing safe sex.
The clinic runs a confidential after-school walk-in service for under-19s, but staff must work quickly as patients often get bored and do not want to wait.
Despite a recent miscarriage, 15-year-old Shannon is not taking her pill and misses appointments to have her contraceptive implant - a key weapon in the government's multi-million pound campaign to halve teen pregnancy - fitted, forcing a sexual health support worker to take her to the op.
And, in three years, Dr Rachael Jones has seen the sudden spread of HIV amongst teenagers. Perry, 17, who has had five HIV screenings in one year, chillingly says: 'If I do have HIV it would be a bit upsetting but I'd have to live with. You can't cry forever.'"

Tuesday 27th

BBC1 - Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Kids - "Faced with the challenging behaviour of their kids, more and more parents in America are turning to psychoactive medication to help them cope, even though the drugs, and sometimes the diagnoses, remain controversial. Louis travels to one of America's leading children's psychiatric treatment centres, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get to know the diagnosed children and hoping to understand what drives parents to put their kids on drugs.
Louis meets Hugh, a 10-year-old who has been diagnosed with ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, Asperger's syndrome and bipolar disorder. Moving in with Hugh and his family, Louis learns more about his controversial diagnosis and gets to know a family where even the dog is on meds.
He also meets Jack, aged six, a child who has been excluded from school for his explosive behaviour and who now takes antidepressant medication for his anxiety. And when 15-year-old Kaylee (diagnosed with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder) takes a day off her medication, Louis gets a glimpse of what life is like without the drugs.
From 'med checks' to 'personal pharmacies', Louis explores the world of psychiatric medication for kids, attempting to find the line between ordinary bad behaviour and pathology, and answer the question of whether the latest pharmaceuticals are taking the place of old-fashioned parenting."

BBC4 - Ride of My Life: The Story of the Bicycle - "Author Rob Penn travels around the world collecting handbuilt parts for his dream bicycle and charts the social history of one of mankind's greatest inventions."

Wednesday 28th

More 4 -The End of the Line - "This is not a film about what might happen, this is a film about what has happened.
The collapse of the cod population saw the end of 40,000 jobs; the bluefin tuna is being hunted to extinction; it takes five kilos of anchovies to produce one fish farmed salmon.
And while there are some positive signs, with Walmart and McDonalds both selling fish from sustainable sources, some outlets still sell endangered species.
But the final chilling conclusion is that unless more radical steps are taken globally, including the reduction of overfishing, it will take just 50 years for the world's ocean's to be all fished out."

Thursday 29th

BBC1 - Stealing Shakespeare - "The remarkable story of how a 53-year-old rare book dealer from the North East of England became the centre of a mystery surrounding the disappearance of a long lost Shakespeare First Folio. The film follows bachelor Raymond Scott as he finds himself the focus of a worldwide investigation, involving the FBI, a Cuban fiancee and Durham CID."

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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.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Off-air recordings for week 17-23 July 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.*

Sunday 18th

Channel 4 - Dispatches: Catching the Gun Runners - "For two years, Dispatches has followed an undercover police operation as it tracked a criminal gang trying to smuggle guns into Britain.
The painstaking work of Lancashire's Serious and Organised Crime Unit culminated in the seizure of a vehicle in Dover containing drugs, weapons and ammunition, and led to the successful conviction of over 20 people involved in this international crime ring.
Operation Greengage exposed the trade in illegal weapons in one northern town. In Catching the Gun Runners, Dispatches examines the shocking proliferation of guns on Britain's streets."

Tuesday 20th

BBC4 - Britain by Bike - new 6-part series - "Clare Balding sets out on a two-wheel odyssey to re-discover Britain – from the saddle of a touring cycle.Clare follows the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe whose evocative guide books of the late 1940s lovingly describe by-passed Britain - a world of unspoiled villages, Cycle Touring clubs and sunny B-Roads…Carrying a set of Harold’s Cycling Touring Guides for company – and riding his very own bicycle – Clare embarks on six iconic cycle rides to try and find the world he described. If it’s still there."

BBC4 - Britain Goes Camping - "Featuring the evocative memories and unseen archive of generations of enthusiasts, a documentary which tells the intriguing story of how sleeping under canvas evolved from a leisure activity for a handful of adventurous Edwardian gents to the quintessentially British family pastime that it is today."

More 4 - The Cove - "With the help of Richard O'Barry, a former dolphin trainer who has since recanted and become the mammal's strongest ally, filmmaker Louis Pshihovos sets out to expose the illicit slaughter of large numbers of dolphins at Taijia, a rural Japanese cove.
The pair have to contend with bureaucratic obduracy, police surveillance and attacks by the fishermen. Forced to film undercover and underwater, they use Industrial Light and Magic's latest technology to capture the heartrending massacres.
Psihovos links events at Taija to wider concerns: the lucrative global aquarium industry, which needs trained dolphins; the impotent regulatory checks in place; and a whaling industry that is flexing its muscles again.
And there is an ironic coda to the slaughter; the dolphin meat is relabelled as whale meat and is particularly popular in children's lunchboxes. The meat is high in poisonous mercury toxins."

Wednesday 21st

Channel 4 - My Weird and Wonderful Family - "Ten years ago, gay British millionaires Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow hit the headlines when their two children, Saffron and Aspen, were born to a surrogate mother in the US, using donor eggs and the couple's sperm. The pair were accused by some of "going against nature" and "shopping for the ultimate gay accessory". Brother Orlando was born four years later, using a frozen embryo. A decade on, award-winning documentary film-maker Daisy Asquith films the family for Cutting Edge over the course of a year, as Tony and Barrie try for more babies."

Thursday 22nd

BBC Radio 4 - Voices from the Old Bailey - 2/4 - Wicked Women - "Four-part series in which Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping Old Bailey court cases from the 18th century and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about the society and culture of the period. Wicked Women. Amanda listens to the voices of criminal women in the Old Bailey - with fellow historians Judith Hawley, Peter King and Jeremy Barlow - on location in a crowded 18th-century lodging house. The first is a shoplifter who pilfers a pair of silk gloves. The second is a con-woman, and her case tells us a lot about the vulnerability of men in the 18th century. The last is an abused wife who chooses the ultimate way out: murder. But once she has murdered her shopkeeper husband, she has great trouble disposing of the body."


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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.

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Off-air recordings for week 10-16 July 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.*

Sunday 11th

BBC2 - Wild Wales - 3-part series - "Iolo Williams shares his passion for Welsh wildlife. Filmed over a year, with stunning aerial and wildlife photography, the first episode features the beautiful south of Wales.
Iolo starts in Pembrokeshire with red deer, seals and a rare sighting of red squirrels. In the Brecon Beacons he discovers spectacular waterfalls, amazing cave structures and bats hiding in dungeons, and also nesting hobbies, goshawks and some stunning birds in Glamorgan and Gwent."

Monday 12th

BBC1 - Panorama: Orphans of Haiti - "Six months to the day when a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, Raphael Rowe returns to uncover what has happened to the country's orphaned and abandoned children.
There are more than four hundred thousand children now living in Haiti's orphanages. Many of those rescued from the rubble are still unidentified or have simply been abandoned by their parents.
Panorama meets others still living on the streets - vulnerable to child traffickers - and asks whether meeting the demand for them to be adopted in other countries, especially America, is really the best answer."

Channel 4 - Dispatches: Africa's Last Taboo - "Gay people in Africa are facing increased persecution in a continent where two thirds of countries retain laws against homosexuals.
Award-winning filmmaker Sorious Samura investigates for Dispatches what it is like to be a gay person in Africa, discovering shocking levels of prejudice and hate, driven by governments, religious organisations and communities.
Samura looks at the impact extreme homophobia is having on gay people's lives, tracking down the victims of a recent mob attack in Kenya, speaking to gay men who have spent time in prison for their sexuality and meeting African homosexuals who are often forced into secret lives.
He discovers that AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate among gay men in Africa who are not being given vital sex education and health care by governments that are opposed to homosexuality. As a result, many gay men are dying needlessly.
Samura goes in search of what is driving homophobia in Africa, finding Muslims and Christians working closely together to target homosexuals and visiting American pastors helping to spread anti-gay sentiment.
Dispatches shows that homosexuality is not an African freedom, revealing a major, but little reported, human rights issue, in a continent where millions of gay people live in constant fear of rejection by their communities, of physical and verbal abuse, and even imprisonment."

BBC4 - Rich Hall's Dirty South - "Rich Hall sets his keen eye and acerbic wit on his homeland once again as he sifts truth from fiction in Hollywood's version of the southern states of the USA. Using specially shot interviews and featuring archive from classic movies such as Gone With The Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire and Deliverance, Rich discovers a South that is about so much more than just rednecks, racism and hillbillies. Rich Hall asserts the American South's claim to being the birthplace of music that makes you want to dance."

Tuesday 13th

BBC1 - Between Life and Death - "Provocative documentary following the doctors who can now interrupt, and even reverse, the process of death. Filmed over six months in the country's leading brain injury unit (Addenbooke's Hospital, Cambridge), it follows the journey of a man who, by only moving his eyes, is eventually asked if he wants to live or die. Two other families are also plunged into the most ethically difficult decision-making in modern medicine."

BBC4 - John Sergeant on Tracks of Empire - 2-parts - "John Sergeant embarks on a unique 3,000 mile journey through the history of the greatest legacy the British left to India - its rail network. The biggest in Asia, it runs on 40,000 miles of track and reaches every corner of the subcontinent. Proposed in 1853 by Governor General Lord Dalhousie, it would become the biggest engineering project of its time and instrumental in every chapter of India's history.
Starting in Kolkata, Sergeant traverses India from east to west, travels through turbulent Bihar state, visits the Victorian railway town of Jamalpur, and discovers why the construction of the Dufferin Bridge at Varanasi resulted in Victorian technology and ingenuity clashing with ancient religion, before ending his journey at the border with Pakistan.
Even though Mahatma Gandhi denounced the railways as evil, Sergeant reveals how it became a civil engineering triumph that united the country and played a crucial role when India became independent in 1947."

Thursday 15th

BBC2 - Victorian Pharmacy - 4-parts - "Historical observational documentary series in which historian Ruth Goodman, Professor Nick Barber and PhD student Tom Quick recreate an authentic 19th-century pharmacy. The team discover a world where traditional remedies, such as leeches, oil of earthworm and potions laced with cannabis and opium, held sway. After sampling some of the old ways, the team venture into new discoveries, such as the Malvern water cure, the bronchial kettle and the invention of Indian tonic water."

BBC4 - Storyville: The Baby and the Buddha - "Nati Baratz's documentary chronicles a former disciple's search for his reincarnated Tibetan master.
After 26 years of isolated meditation in a mountain cave, Lama Konchog became one of the greatest Tibetan masters of our time. When he passed away in 2001 at 84, the Dalai Lama instructed his shy, devoted disciple Tenzin Zopa to search for his master's reincarnation. This 'unmistaken child' must be found within four years, before it becomes too difficult to remove him from his parents' care.
Tenzin entered the service of Lama Konchog at the age of seven, at his own request, and was with his master continuously for 21 years. The loss of his teacher leaves Tenzin bereft and he is further unsettled by the unexpected responsibility of carrying out the highly secretive search for his spiritual father, who is now expected to be embodied in a little boy and may be anywhere in the world.
His search crosses countries, passing through mountains and villages that appear to have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Assisted by astrology, signs from dreams and the whispers of villagers, Tenzin travels by helicopter, mule and foot. When he comes upon an apparent contender, the documentary accompanies Tenzin and his young charge through the mysterious procedures that may confirm the reincarnation.
While the film brings to light a rarely seen aspect of the Buddhist faith, the true revelation is Tenzin's journey as a man. We come to know him as modest and shy, but with an impish sense of humour. He appears to be of another time and place, yet lives profoundly in the present. Alone on his quest, he is only able to share his thoughts and feelings with filmmaker Baratz. Tenzin's simple honesty and unselfconsciousness make the viewer a privileged partner in his passage."

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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.