The Red Revolution - Young Love by Ana Costin

Ana Costin is our recent graduate who won the Best Audio Award for her outstanding Final Major Project The Red Revolution. We are happy to share with you this exclusive interview about what went into creating the podcast how she reacted to feedbacks or where is she now. 

Can you give us an overview of the theme and content of your podcast?

I always preferred to call it an audio journalistic piece/interview, but the podcast
is essentially about young love during the dictatorship and difficult times. The
podcast presents my parents’ start of their relationship as two teenagers/young
adults whilst showing the advantages they had because of their parents’
positions in the communist society. I think the blurb about my podcast best
represents what the story means:

The Red Revolution: Young Love is an audio piece about the love story of two
teenagers during Ceausescu’s rule. The two lovers tell us different anecdotes of
how they lived their teenage years together with the help of their parents’
positions in society. The two of them, my mother and father, look back on those
days and realise the privileges as well as hardships they had to face as a young
couple in love. The piece is dedicated to them as they celebrate their 35th
anniversary.

2. What was the most challenging aspect of producing your podcast?

The production/post-production itself wasn’t as challenging, except for the fact that it
had a considerable amount of travelling back and forth between the UK and
Romania. I decided to sacrifice the technical aspect by recording with my phone,
which came out quite well, as the story was more important.

The real challenge was how the story evolved and the necessary research for the
piece. The initial idea of the podcast started as an analysis of gastronomical
creations during a period of food scarcity in 1980s Romania. People had to sit in
queues with food cards, as everyone was limited to a specific amount of food per
week. It then moved on to a comparison of my parents’ lives considering their
family history, to the final storyline which was my parents’ love story during
communism. This took most of my time, initially the concept was meant to be
decided in February and I finally did in early April.

The research aspect was very difficult because my sources were my parents.
Whilst on my mother’s side I had the chance to find out from multiple family
members, on my father’s side I only had my father’s memories. The difficult
aspect was that my paternal grandparents divorced when he was 3 years old so
he was the only one who had contact with my grandfather who was high in rank
during communism, which brought a lot of advantages to my father’s life during
that period and my mother’s later on.

3. How did you choose the topics?

I wanted to choose something unique which I knew about. Considering I’m from
Eastern Europe, most of the time my friends and lecturers were interested in
communism in Romania. In context, communism in Romania was a lot harsher
than in other countries and Ceausescu was one of the most ruthless dictators.
Considering I’m from Romania everyone was interested to hear personal stories
which I knew from my family as well as I had the historical context from other
projects I have worked on.

4. Can you describe the research process that went into the creation of your
podcast?

My research was mainly my parents, since it was their love story, with a few
secondary sources such as my maternal grandparents and the Arhivele
Nationale Românești. The ANR (National Romanian Archives in English) was
useful to confirm certain elements of communism, such as my grandfather’s
position in the Party.

5. How did you handle feedback, both positive and negative, as you were
developing your episodes?

My sessions with Paul, my supervisor, were interesting. The feedback was direct
but it developed a conversation each time since I had to give Paul a historical
context. I did not mind negative nor positive feedback, since I felt like having
someone who wasn’t emotionally involved in the project to help me see the
errors in my project.

6. Do you plan to continue with this story or do you plan to create different
podcasts in the future?

I currently don’t plan on creating new episodes, but I am currently working on a 3
episodes documentary on a similar topic about that time period which will come
out in December 2023. In 2024 there will also be a fiction film about that period
for which I was a production assistant. I can confidently say I am still very deep in
this topic production-wise.

 

Link to The Red Revolution: https://soundcloud.com/solentmedia/the-red-revolution-young-love-by-ana-costin

 

What are your thoughts on this project? How did the podcast resonate with you? Share your feedback in the comments!

 

by Monika Volfova