Director Craig Whitney discussed The Red Note podcast with Yo Ciudadano
The Red Note podcast director Craig Whitney sat down earlier this week with the Ciudad Juarez news outlet Yo Ciudadano to discuss the making of the podcast, the issue of the femicides in Juarez, and the upcoming feature film about the femicides, also called The Red Note. A translation of the Spanish interview is reproduced below.
Click on the following link to read the original article in Spanish: La Nota Roja: un podcast sobre los feminicidios en Juárez
The Red Note: A Podcast About the Femicides in Juarez
The podcast, narrated by journalist and activist Lydia Cacho, compiles for historical memory the stories of some of the families of victims of femicide and disappearance.
By Favia Lucero / Yo Ciudadano
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.— Three days ago the last episode of the podcast The Red Note was published, a project that tells the story of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez and the impunity that continues in the thousands of cases of girls and women who have been victims of sexist violence.
Through the voices of the mothers of the victims of femicide and disappearance, activists, researchers, journalists and former public servants, the history that classified this border as "the city that kills women" is spun.
The podcast, written and directed by filmmaker Craig Whitney, is presented to the public in Spanish and English, something that had not previously been done in a project addressing this issue.
It is the journalist and activist Lydia Cacho who guides the listeners in the different interviews presented throughout 10 episodes of approximately 45 minutes each.
Whitney explains that initially it was planned to make a feature film on the same subject, however, the American production company Imperative Entertainment proposed the idea of turning the project into a podcast.
Now that the podcast, which is on various platforms such as Spotify and the Apple Podcasts, is finished, the team plans to continue with the main idea.
"We are very excited to be able to go ahead and shoot the feature film because it is such an important story," adds Whitney.
According to the director, La Nota Roja has been heard in Latin America, Europe and Africa, since gender violence is an issue that unfortunately is not exclusive to Mexico.
"The version is very specific to Juárez and it is very important to me that we can share an idea of the culture of Juárez and northern Mexico, but there are also aspects of this story that are common throughout the world," he says.
Regarding the way in which they approached the issue of femicides and disappearances of women in Juárez, Whitney recognizes the great work carried out by the journalist from Juarez, Alicia Fernández, who was in charge of conducting the interviews.
“As the director of the podcast, I have read many books, articles and other materials on this subject but I am not from Mexico, my perspective will be different from the border perspectives… For example, I think that if someone else did the interviews with the victims were not going to have the emotional connection with them as Alicia had. Or during the editing of the scripts that I was working with Lydia Cacho, who has experience in Juárez; she has a perspective on how we could have respect in our narrative,” he says.
One of the chapters closes with Cacho's voice issuing a strong message of hope, resistance and unity among women: "Together, we Mexicans will continue until that day comes when no one justifies violence as a method of oppression and sexist repression."