La Maison de la Radio (Philibert, 2012)
Today’s offering is a little more obscure than some of the more recent ones but I know that there are a few subscribers here who work – or have worked, or will work again – in public broadcasting so I hope you are as interested in what goes on at one of the giant outfits as I am.
I was reminded of this film as I was listening to the great Kim Hill interviewing the director, Nicholas Philibert, about his latest film, Sur l’Adamant. (Yes, I know that aired back in July, I have a big Kim backlog…)
Back in 2013 I wrote this about La Maison de la Radio (The House of Radio):
I’m a radio-head from my childhood. I love radio, listening to it, appearing on it, making it. I love looking at studios, perving at microphones, the red lights that go on when the mics are live, the silently ticking clocks. Watching Nicolas Philibert’s The House of Radio, I was a pig in shit. I don’t think I’ve been as blissed out as this watching a film for ages. It’s one day in the life of Radio France, where seemingly dozens of stations share a giant Parisian cathedral dedicated to the wireless. News, talk, culture, music – classical, jazz and hip-hop. Philibert’s polite camera peers into their studios and their offices, even the Tour de France correspondent reporting live from the back of a motorbike.
While the conceit is that it follows a single day, I understand it took six months to actually shoot. Documentary always equals truth, eh?
There are some lovely scenes: serious radio drama, a live quiz show with a studio audience where the host has a xylophone to sound the countdown to each answer, the classical music host surrounded by towers of CDs that threaten to topple over and squash him forever.
Tomorrow I get to indulge my love of radio once more as I fill in for Simon Morris on RNZ’s At the Movies. On air 7.30m on RNZ National (and again on Sunday at 1.30pm and Monday at 12.30am.
Where to find La Maison de la Radio
In Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay
In the UK and US: Digital rental from the usual sources
Further reading
I dropped another entry in my Quixotic quest to watch every film in the Sight & Sound Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time at RNZ: Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
And, just in time for Halloween, I previewed some of the titles available on the horror-focused streaming service Shudder.
