I guess you all had , at some stage of your live, the bad experience of a postponed rendez-vous. The beloved one didn't appear, and there you stood, with your wilted flowers. Weeping in the rain. Sipping your carefully cooled wine alone.
Thus happened with the close encounter between CBC and the IFC, marked with pink ink in our agenda's for May 2003.
Our appointment was disturbed by a cruel act of sabotage! A mean witch, called Mrs. SARS, came and destroyed our plans. We humbly had the accept she was stronger than our transcontinental love. The IFC took the right decision to suspend the romance.

We organized a second appointment. Tricky! Will the fire of desire be still burning? Or will the heart be wilted like the flowers five months ago?
The IFC is delighted the lovers were faithful. You all look even better than in May 2003. With still the traces of summer on your faces. Suntanned and relaxed. And the team grew up to a hundred attendees!
Thank you CBC for your flexibility! Thanks Bernie Lucht, Steve Wadhams, Sharon Lewin and Susan Mahoney! And we are very pleased to welcome Peter Leonard Braun, our founder father to be among us. And Laurent Marceau from the EBU, our brother in arms since the IFC is operating under the EBU umbrella. Laurent will be with us tomorrow. He took the right plane, but got the wrong food.

Our most cherished colleagues are the young ones. The winners of the Ake Blomstršm- grants : Carmen Petcu from Romania, Karina Schwann from Austria and Myriam Fimbry from SociŽtŽ Radio Canada. And there is more young blood streaming through the IFC .
We are very happy to welcome four of the eleven trainees from the EBU Masterschool for young documentary makers : Hege Dahl from Norway, Wim Van Grootloon from VRT, Belgium, Marie-Luise Goerke from Germany and Priscille Cazin from RTBF, Belgium.
I will have the pleasure to present their work, together with Nathalie Labourdette from the EBU International Training Unit next Thursday.

Back to our main concern. The radio documentary. For years now, it is announced that the genre will die one day or another. I must confess times are hard now and there is a danger the genre could be swallowed by today's new strategies of radio management. Give the listener what he wants. Short, flashy items. Many radio strategies know better now and a good, common sense seems to prevail again. But it is our duty to put creative and intense radio on the map again. The voices of the citizens, undergoing the turmoil of today's society should be heard. As feature makers, we can be more sharp, more actual in the choice of our topics, and deal with the big issues of our time. We shouldn't only explore the artistic assets of the medium as such.
News reports deal mostly with the questions : what happened, when and where ? They should be short and factual.

Radio documentaries can focus on the deeper meanings of what is breeding in the world and try to find an answer to the why and how questions and explore the mechanics behind human behavior, behind choices, decisions, doubts.
One of the best questions is : how could it come so far? "