The Film We Can't See BBC Radio 4 Extra

The sound archive from 1930 is about to be auctioned to mysterious bidders. The sounds are linked to extraordinary film pioneers and an unrealised film that would have changed the world — but today they may be lost again. The Rio Cinema will be forced to give up the archive. Can Adam pitch this to the BBC for a podcast series?

Adam assembles So Mayer, Anton Blake Horowitz and members of the Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest collective to build a community of support for the Rio. But not everything is what it seems. As documentary transforms into imagination, queer artists take over and reveal that truth is more powerful than fact. With daring soundscapes and surprise audio experimentation — challenging everything that a podcast about an unseeable film can be — the series reaches its shocking climax.

Credits
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Music by Courtney Pine
Solo fiddle by Eduardo Lees
Assistant Producers – Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher — So Mayer
Audio consultant – David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors – Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers – Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer

Thanks to
Aleks Kolkowski
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
Joseph Herscher
Josefeen Foxter
Orrow Bell
Jose Castejoon
Burley Fisher Books
The Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest collective
This episode contains audio from:
Sound effects from Freesound and BBC
Clip from Monitor interview with Paul Robeson courtesy of BBC

The creative but awkward dynamic between writer Adam Zmith and actor Anton Blake Horowitz blows up. They are trying to collaborate, but the boundary between creativity and personal experiences breaks. Wounded, Adam hears more about the history of censorship from film archivist So Mayer, who also reveals their own personal motivations for researching film and queer history.

Just as there is an exciting revelation about the classified fifth disc in the sound archive, the entire project looks threatened. The Rio Cinema, which wants to keep the sounds in community ownership, may have to give them up. The sounds may fall back into obscurity once again, so Adam begins to mobilise support for the Rio.
Credits
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Music by Courtney Pine
Assistant Producers – Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher — So Mayer
Audio consultant – David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors – Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers – Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer

Thanks to
Aleks Kolkowski
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
Ben Lalague
Jose Castejoon
Natasha Walker
India Latham

Adam’s investigation into the lost sound archive prompts him to watch Mädchen in Uniform, a lesbian high school dramedy from 1931. He learns all about how the film was nearly lost forever, and its significance today is explained to him by Camilla Baier and Rachel Pronger from Invisible Women, a feminist film collective.
Adam also listens to the fourth sound disc - a weird multi-voice dadaist poem - and tries to imagine where that might fit into the story of the film that was never made. Perhaps it’s one of the many unrealised projects of Paul Robeson, the actor and singer who fought racism and fascism while performing for audiences around the world. Paul’s own stories of censorship and racism inspire So Mayer, the writer and researcher, to take Adam on a visit to a historical location, the Savoy Hotel. Here they meet actors Ashleigh Wilder and Emeric Bernard-Jones. Over cocktails they pick up Paul’s story, linking past and present in a story of how our genders and sexualities influence how people perceive us all.
This episode contains audio from:
Clip from Monitor interview with Paul Robeson courtesy of BBC
Clip from newsreel about Paul Robeson concert courtesy of BBC
Sound effects from Freesound and BBC
And quotes from:
‘What Shall You Do In the War?’ by Bryher, in Close Up magazine, June 1933
Letter from Paul Robeson to James Marley, reprinted on The Guardian website, 2019
Paul Robeson, quoted by Martin Bauml Duberman in Paul Robeson, Ballantine Books, 1989
Credits:
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Ashleigh Wilder as Paul Robeson and themself, thanks to Queer House
Emeric Bernard-Jones as Paul Robeson and himself, thanks to Trans+ on Screen, an organisation representing trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming professionals in film and TV on a business model which challenges industry norms
Music by Courtney Pine
Assistant Producers - Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher - So Mayer
Audio consultant - David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors - Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers - Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer
Thanks to:
Aleks Kolkowski
Camilla Baier and Rachel Pronger from Invisible Women
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
Char Boden at Queer House
Alice Blanc at Trans+ on Screen
Polly Pritchard and Virginia Webb at the Savoy Hotel
A. De La Fe, Lori lo Bianco, Holly Murtha, Shivani Dave

Adam travels back in time to Weimar era Berlin, when the American actor Louise Brooks danced through the experimental cinema scene with her sexual chaos in films like Pandora’s Box. Film writer Pamela Hutchinson explains why Brooks was so unique, and why her power endures even though her films were censored and lost. As Louise blew through Berlin, Magnus Hirschfeld was giving controversial lectures about sex and sexuality.
With the help of historian Jana Funke and sound expert Aleks Kolkowski, Adam learns more about what this setting might mean for the film conjured up by the rediscovered sound recordings. How are our decisions driven by the sex we want? Could a film in 1930 have been ready to explore that?
Credits
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Featuring voice work by Michael Golab
Music by Courtney Pine
Assistant Producers - Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher - So Mayer
Audio consultant - David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors - Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers - Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer
This episode contains audio from:
Clip from Pandora’s Box courtesy of Praesens Film
Sound effects from BBC
And quotes from
Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks, University of Minnesota Press, 1982
Thanks to
Aleks Kolkowski
Pamela Hutchinson
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
Freya Anderton

Adam goes deeper into the Rio Cinema archives with researcher So Mayer. They find more work by the pioneering filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the extraordinary actor Louise Brooks. Perhaps they were trying to make a radical film together, in 1930?
With help from the historian Jana Funke, Adam learns more about Hirschfeld’s exciting ideas on sex, sexuality and gender. Visiting Aleks Kolkowski in his music room again, he begins to try to date the sound discs. And actor Anton Blake Horowitz helps to reanimate Eisenstein and even his own performing spirit.
As Adam immerses himself more and more into the world of cinema in 1930, he begins to fear that the imagined film never got made due to the rise in fascism. Many films showing queer bodies and expansive ways of living were made in the 1920s and 30s but so many of them were burnt and lost...
Credits
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Music by Courtney Pine
Solo fiddle by Eduardo Lees
Assistant Producers - Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher - So Mayer
Audio consultant - David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors - Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers - Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer
Thanks to
Aleks Kolkowski
Jana Funke at the University of Exeter
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
This episode contains the following audio:
Clip of Nazis burning books in 1933 courtesy of British Pathé
And quotes from:
A Statement by S. M. Eisenstein, V. I. Pudomn, and G. V. Alexandrov, Close Up magazine, 1928
Sergei Eisenstein’s letter to Magnus Hirschfeld, reprinted in The Flying Carpet: Studies on Eisenstein and Russian Cinema in Honor of Naum Kleiman, edited by Joan Neuberger and Antonio Somaini, Éditions Mimésis, 2017

When a meandering phone call from a forgotten actor called Anton Blake Horowitz leads Adam Zmith into an old cinema, he rediscovers a box of old sound recordings. They’re labelled Eisenstein Project, possibly after Sergei Eisenstein, pioneer of cinema in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It’s perfect for Adam, a writer and podcast producer who is looking for a story to work on and pitching to the BBC for a new series.
Adam meets sound expert Aleks Kolkowski who helps to retrieve the sounds from the old records. He teams up with So Mayer, a writer and researcher who explains more about Eisenstein. He even meets the veteran film director Sally Potter, who visited Eisenstein’s apartment and has been inspired by his work in making her films such as Orlando from 1992.
Perhaps these lost records are the sound tests for a film that Eisenstein was preparing to make in 1930? Adam returns to Anton, the actor who set him off on this journey and Anton hears something in the old sounds that Adam didn’t...
Credits
Written, produced and edited by Adam Zmith
With story by So Mayer and Adam Zmith
Starring Anton Blake Horowitz
Music by Courtney Pine
Assistant Producers - Tash Walker and Shivani Dave
Researcher - So Mayer
Audio consultant - David Pye
Artwork by Danny Crossley
Production Mentors - Caroline Steel and Andy King
Executive Producers - Khaliq Meer and Leanne Alie
Commissioned for BBC Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer
Thanks to
Aleks Kolkowski
Sally Potter
Andrew Woodyatt and everyone at the Rio Cinema
Peninsula Press
The BFI and the BFI National Archive
Axel Kacoutié
Nikki Meadows
Rebecka Öberg
Joseph Herscher
Permissions
Clip from Memories of Berlin courtesy of Gary Conklin
Clips from Great Directors: Eisenstein: Part 2 courtesy of BBC
Quote from Sergei Eisenstein, held at Eisenstein Archives at TsGALI (State Archives of Literature and Arts), Moscow, quoted in Sergei Eisenstein: A Life In Conflict by Ronald Bergan, Arcade Publishing, 1997