Spectres of Shortwave is an experimental film which features a stunning landscape with 13 shortwave towers and people’s testimony about how they experienced them. It has been modified to also serve as a radio documentary.
The towers, ranging in height from 60 to 137 metres, were built in 1938 in Sackville in the eastern province of New Brunswick, a location ideal for transmitting shortwave around the world. During World War II, the site broadcast Radio Canada International programming. It also served as a relay for Radio China, Radio Japan, Radio Korea, Voice of Vietnam and Vatican radio.
Transmissions heard in household appliances
Director Amanda Christie lived nearby and became intrigued with the transmitters as she passed by them, and particularly after taking part in a radio-building workshop where she built a receiver from a toilet paper roll.
While the transmissions were designed for an international audience, local people often heard them through their bathtubs, toaster, refrigerators, telephones and light fixtures. People developed an attachment to the towers, and they inspired folklore and rural mythology. Christie wanted people to hear their stories.
‘Unintentional listeners’ a central theme
“The stories that you hear range from technicians talking about how the site works, why it was built, accidents that happened, and their staff parties to local people who heard the radio in their fridge, who had very emotional attachments to the landscape as well as individuals who felt that the radio towers caused them to dream in other languages, and then theories about how the radio towers were being used during the Cold War. And so it’s story after story in more of an anecdote style…
“I want my listeners to feel like they are unintentional witnesses. They are overhearing bits of conversations that may or may not have been intended for them the way that people would have heard the radio out of their fridge or sink.”
Christie collected stories from three local communities—English speaking, French-speaking Acadians, and indigenous Mi’kmaq people—as well as from far-away places like Kuala Lumpur and the North Pole.
News of dismantling ‘was emotional’
The project suddenly took on more importance when it was announced that the transmitters would be taken down and that Radio Canada International would no longer be a shortwave service but be exclusively carried on the internet as of 2012.
“(That) changed the project immensely because all of a sudden I was documenting a historic event. When I started I thought they would be there for another 70 years so it was okay to make something for a small audience of people who were interested in experimental film,” says Christie. She then felt she had to treat it more like a documentary. “It was emotional.”
Conjuring ‘ghosts of the towers’
The film will be shown in small festivals in Canada and Christie is working to have them presented in festivals around the world. She eventually will produce CDs for distribution.
Christie has other highly creative projects on the go to present the stories of the transmitters. They include photos, dance and other media as well as the use of technology to produce sound from the towers themselves. She says the recordings conjure to ghosts of the towers which is the idea transmitted by the film’s title, Spectres of Shortwave.
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