Category: International

Hollywood on the Tiber

 

hotAs Cinecittà marks its 75th anniversary, Mukti Jain Campion looks back at the extraordinary early history of Rome’s most famous film studios. (1×28′)

First broadcast October 2012      BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Sandy Lieberman, Flavia Gentili, Noa Steimatsky and Giampaolo Grassi

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

 

Radio Choice: The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent, Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Mail on Sunday and Radio Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Read D J Taylor’s Review in The Tablet

Read the Conor Maynard’s Review in The Stage

Sacred Election: Lessons from the biggest democracy in the world

 

7. After voting, man displays his finger marked with indelible inkIt’s the biggest single organised event in the world

714 million voters, 800,000 polling stations

7 million election officials and securuty forces

…and 1.2 million electronic voting machines

Hearing ear

 

 

Political anthropologist Dr Mukulika Banerjee of University College London goes behind the scenes of India’s 15th General Election to discover how the country manages to defy apparently insuperable odds to deliver an efficient voting process that is admired across the world and hears why so many ordinary Indians take such pride in voting. ( 1 x 37′)

First broadcast May 2009   BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Election Commissioner Dr SY Quraishi, political analyst Yogendra Yadav and veteran British psephologist Dr David Butler, and many voters around the country – from paddy farmers in West Bengal to slum dwellers in Mumbai.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent

Who’s Fit to be a Parent?

 

IMukti Jain Campions parenting a private matter or has it become too complex and too important a job to leave to parents alone? Mukti Jain Campion (author of Who’s Fit to be a Parent? Routledge 1995) examines the arguments for more state intervention in how parents raise the next generation of citizens. (1 x 39′)

First broadcast August 1995 BBC Radio 4

 

The programme discusses with subtlety and depth the many ways in which most people are unprepared for parenthood -Polly Toynbee, Radio Times

 

Contributors include: Christopher Clulow, Director of the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute; Gerison Lansdown, Director of the UK Children’s Rights Development Unit; Albert Solnit, Paediatrician, psychiatrist and former director of the Yale Child Studies Centre; Jill Hodges, Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Great Ormond Street;  Hugh LaFollette, Professor of Philosophy East Tennessee State University and author of Licensing Parents; David Townsend, Director of Social Services

Producers Mukti Jain Campion and Rachel Yorke

A co-production with Track Record

 

Tagore at 150

 

tag

In the beautiful setting of Dartington Hall in Devon, poets, singers and ecologists gather to share their favourite Rabindranath Tagore verse at a festival to mark the 150th anniversary of the Bengali poet’s birth. Introduced by Satish Kumar, Artistic Director of the Festival who is a devotee of Tagore’’s ecological teachings as well as his poetry. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  July 2011     BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Modern translators of Tagore William Radice and Ketaki Kushari Dyson, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, singers Debashish and Rohini Raychaudhuri, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt and internationalist Clare Short .

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio choice: The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph

Antarcticans

 

antTo mark the centenary of Roald Amundsen’s arrival at the South Pole (to be followed a month later by Captain Scott), Radio 3’s The Essay each night is presented by professionals who have lived and worked in Antarctica. (5 x 14′)

First broadcast December 2011  BBC Radio 3

Producer Chris Eldon Lee

These essays are delights, full of extraordinary details and brimming with passion   – Elizabeth Mahoney, The Guardian.

 

Read Elizabeth Mahoney’s  full review

  1. Glaciologist David Drewry recalls his adventurous efforts to survey Antarctica’s landscape.
  2. Writer Meredith Hooper witnesses the plight of penguins affected by climate change.
  3. John Sweeny relives his desperate efforts to find a new home for Antarctica’s last huskies.
  4. Geologist Jane Francis struggles to make ice cream freeze in the Antarctic.
  5. David Walton describes the tricky legal struggle to protect Antarctica from humans.

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

 

The Future is Halal

 

YNavid Halalou’ve heard of halal meat, but what about halal paintbrushes, halal perfume or halal holiday resorts? Navid Akhtar investigates the astonishing global rise of products and services specifically targeting Muslim consumers – who are predicted to make up 30% of the world’s population by 2025. (1 x 37′)

First broadcast August 2012 BBC Radio 4

 

 

Contributors include: Shelina Jan Mohammed, Abdalhamid Evans, Dr Mah Hussein-Gambles, Daud Vicary, Peter Gould, Dr Karim Douglas Crow, Fazal Bahardeen and Jumatuun Azmi.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Guardian Guide , The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday, The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

The Little Black Fish That Created Big Waves

 

Little Black FishNegar Esfandiary looks inside the covers of one of her favourite childhood books from Iran and discovers a powerful political allegory that has inspired countless activists and artists since it was first published in 1968. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  August 2011     BBC Radio 4

Storyteller Richard Neville & Letter readings by Ravin Ganatra

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

A little hymn to freedom – Simon O’ Hagan, The Independent

 

Radio Choice: The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Radio Times

Move Over Wodehouse

India’s English-speaking middle class is expanding fast and expected to reach 500 million by 2025. It represents a dream market for publishers and one that is set to become the biggest in the world. So what books are Indians reading? How are the perennial classics such as Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse faring against the emerging Indian authors? And what does it take to become a bestseller in India? Mukti Jain Campion reports from the Jaipur Literature Festival and from Trivandrum in Kerala, India’s most literate state. (1 x 28′)

The programme was full of humour, interest and symbolic import – D J Taylor, The Tablet

First broadcast   May 2012 BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: best-selling authors Jeffrey Archer, Chetan Bhagat, William Dalrymple, Jaishree Misra and Tarun Tejpal.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Sunday Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

The secret to writing a bestseller in India

Read DJ Taylor’s Tablet Review

One Billion Digitally Identified Indians

 

obdiiIndia is rolling out the largest and most technologically ambitious national identity scheme in the world. It aims to enrol each of the country’s billion residents with a unique identity number using biometric data from their fingerprint and iris scans.

Mukti Jain Campion reports from India on the hopes and fears sparked by the scheme and the global interest it has attracted.  (1 x 28′)

First broadcast July 2013 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion    Executive Producer Charles Miller

Radio Choice: The Radio Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, The Observer

Hearing ear

Reclaiming the Swastika

 

RECLAIMING THE SWASTIKA

A symbol of fascism or a universal sign for good luck?  Mukti Jain Campion uncovers the long history of the swastika and examines calls for it to be reclaimed from its Nazi links. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast October 2014 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

fair, fascinating and exemplary – Paul Donovan, The Sunday Times

 

Radio Choice: The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer and Radio Times

BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week

You can see the swastikas discussed in the programme

Read BBC News article   How the world loved the swastika – until Hitler stole it

Hearing ear