'The Sound of Friendship’ by Anandita Bajpai

India/63 minutes/German and Hindi with English Subtitles/2022

Event details
Date: November 09
Time: 18:30
Venue: Historical Observatory, Geismar Landstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen
Duration: 63 min
Director: Anandita Bajpai (will be present)
Discussant: Patrick Eisenlohr, CeMIS

The Sound of Friendship tells the story of GDR's foreign broadcasting station Radio Berlin International (RBI), particularly its Hindi program, which catered to thousands of listeners in India. Aired from the Funkhaus at Nalepastrasse in Berlin from 1967 to 1990, the film recounts the perspectives of East German/Indian presenters, behind microphones, and listeners behind radio sets in India. It takes viewers from locales in Berlin to Madhepura, Bihar where we trace the trajectory of one of RBI's listeners' clubs from the 1980s called the 'Lenin Club'. How did cross-border friendships develop between listeners in India and journalists in East Germany? How are these connections remembered today, more than 30 years after the station was shut down? The film not only brings together the (often) lost pasts of the radio station and its presenters' biographies but is also a channel of communication between fans and radio voices that have never met in person. Shot in India in 2019 and Germany in 2020 and 2021 (in the midst of challenges posed by COVID-19), the film aims to revive the mood of the times when radio frequencies weren't just used for acoustic competition across the Iron Curtain divide but also to forge a warmth across two continents.