Vagy/Szomjusag/Thirst

SUGGESTED INTRO As a boy, George Bien was sent thousands of miles away from his home in Hungary to Siberia and the notorious GULAG, the prison camp system in the Soviet Union where millions of people perished. Producer Alex van Oss came to know George Bien decades later, and learned of his most personal and vivid experience of thirst. BROADCAST HISTORY Vagy/Szomjusag/Thirst (pronounced 'Vadzh/Som-you-shahg) was one of four ShortDocs commissioned for the 2003 Third Coast International Audio Festival 'Variation on a Thirst' competition. STYLE DESCRIPTION With its 'painterly' approach to sound and story, the style of piece, says Van Oss, is nonetheless not intended as a personal statement: "My hope is that it allows the idea of 'thirst' and my subject's story to emerge more clearly and dramatically -- and in a short span of time....Sound elements are not "real," for they were not recorded on location for this feature. I wanted them to be like doors opening and closing -- doors in the mind. After all, that's how we think and experience things. We do not experience real life the way it is presented in a standard news report."