MN.11.11.1999. Memories of the Millennium from China

I remember this edition of Media Network because it had a superb story from China as part of the Memory of the Millennium. The author explained how radio had been a friend and foe in his life, especially to his father. It is only when you visit other countries where listening to foreign radio stations is discouraged that you realise the risks people took in the past, and (in some countries like Burma) risks that they still take today. This edition also contains a chat with the late Bob Tomalski on recordable DVD's (what a standards mess that was) and we hear from a listener in the UK who believes the BBC is trying to do too much. This edition was recorded at a time when BBC German was amongst a number of language sections threatened with closure. We also did film reviews: Henry Stokes writes from Green Bay Wisconsin. I remember in the dim distant past, Media Network ran a series of features about Motion Picture musings, a sort of film review section where the idea was to spotlight films that somehow involved radio in their plot. It seems incredible that films such as Good Morning Vietnam are now well over a decade old. Since then a few James Bond films have had a radio connection with fights on radio telescopes for instance, but these days’ secret agents are sent abroad to blow up satellite TV stations not clandestine radio transmitters. I live in an area with quite a lot of people from Polish origin and there has been some considerable discussion about a new film by Robin Williams called Jakob the Liar. It is actually a remake of an East German film from 1974 with the same name, although the new version gets more treatment from Hollywood special effects. This is a holocaust drama about a Jewish concentration camp. The critics have panned it because of the rather forced Polish accents by the American actors, especially Allen Arkin. It also disappeared from the cinema circuits here very quickly and I’m not sure whether it has been released yet in Europe, I doubt it. My reason for bringing it up is that it the star of the film, Jakob, is a lonely widower in 1945 who starts to become popular when he listens to allied broadcasts from the BBC and then relays the information to the others in the Polish concentration camp. Excited by the news that the Russians are on their way, he gives a lot of people hope in the midst of their despair. But since the news isn’t always want they want to hear, he starts embellishing. He also claims to own a transmitter so he can get secret news in and out. I enjoyed the way they portrayed short-wave broadcasting at the time. The rest of the film was only fair. The photo was taken at the entrance to the Shanghai metro in the days when being asked not to take explosives onto the metro was really quite funny. How times have changed.