Director and broadcaster Sofia Saldanha, known for her sound documentaries, which expressed “poetics, documentaries and fiction,” died Sunday, at the age of 47, a victim of chronic disease, and Antena 2 confirmed the station she worked for.
The public station, which on Monday at 7 p.m. aired in her honor an excerpt from one of her works “Lisbon de Fernando Pessoa”, described Sofia Saldanha as a creator and voice artist, “pioneering and innovative”, who has become a “radio reference in Portugal”.
Sofia Saldanha captured and shaped the voices of the world and people, then brought them back to us in sensitive and intelligent documentaries, where we saw and heard, in the dark and listening, the voices and footsteps of poets like Fernando Pessoa or Miguel Torga, the sound space of a thunderstorm, or that are picked up like pebbles on tracks And texts and voices by different authors, and encapsulation of small plays to be heard on the radio ”, can be read on the Antena 2 website.
Born in Braga in 1975, Sofia Saldanha started working in radio in 1992 while still in high school.
He worked for 15 years at Rádio Universitária do Minho, after completing his master’s degree in radio at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in the UK, and deepening his experience as a documentary filmmaker at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, in the USA. .
Won Best New Artist Award at Third Coast International Festival of Sound (USA, 2010), Nominated for Prix Europa in 2019, HearSay Award – International HearSay Festival of Vocal Arts (Ireland, 2019), Prix Marulic – International Radio Festival (Croatia 2020), and the Silver Prize in the Short Forms category at the Prix Marulic – International Radio Festival 2021 (Croatia).
His documentaries have been broadcast on Rádio Antena 2, BBC Radio 4 and on many North American radio channels.
It is part of In The Dark, an association founded in London in 2010, dedicated to the dissemination of innovative audio documentaries, which regularly organizes, in public, audio hearings in the dark, having founded, in 2018, In The Dark Lisbon.
Sofia Saldanha was also a member of the Sindicato de Poesia, a cultural association working since October 1996 on the performative act of reciting poetry.
In January and February, Antena 2 will broadcast the documentaries “I Come and Go, Memories of Miguel Torga” and “The Syndromes of a Broken Heart”.
Among the works he has performed are such titles as “1974: April 25th on the Radio”, “A Trovoada” or “In the Dark and Listening”.
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