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When it first made headlines in 2010, Jason Leach’s UK-based company And Vinyly – which presses the ashes of the deceased into vinyl records for loved ones wishing to hold onto their memory – appeared to be something of a macabre novelty. But there might be more to preserving the departed (quite literally) on records than first meets the eye – and ear. Hearing Madge explores how Leach’s venture was given new meaning when he was approached by a man looking to save his mother’s recollections that he had recorded shortly before her death. Surprisingly touching, Andrea Lewis’s short documentary is both a profile of an unusual business and a thought-provoking contemplation of the ways we chose to remember the dead.
Director: Andrea Lewis
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War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
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Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
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Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes