Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Thursday, 10pm and Saturday, 10.30pm. Ph 9565 5522.
Access News — Melbourne community TV, Channel 31, has excellent coverage of industrial, environmental and community actions throughout Victoria. Access News broadcasts every Monday at 8pm. Ph 9633 6976.
The Long Shadow: the Lives of A-bomb Orphans — This program traces the lives of two of the children orphaned by the US bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. SBS, Friday, August 6, 12.30pm.
Loose Nukes — An investigation into the threat of nuclear smuggling from the former Soviet Union. SBS, Friday, August 6, 1.25pm.
Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk — Mikhail Shapiro's film version of Shostakovich's opera about love and revenge unleashed an outrageous campaign of vilification by Stalin in 1936. A notorious article in Pravda attacked the work for its ugliness, tunelessness, noisiness and especially its treatment of sex and violence, an attack from which Shostakovich never really recovered and which changed the course of Soviet music. The incomparable Galina Vishnevskaya stars as the doomed Katerina Ismailova. SBS, Saturday, August 7, 12.30pm.
Nagasaki: a Record of Life and Death — On August 10, 1945, 73,000 people in Nagasaki were killed instantly by a US atomic bomb. The following day, a young photographer, Yosuke Yamahata, was dispatched to record what had taken place. Those unforgettable photographs, restored and exhibited, were presented to the public simultaneously in San Francisco, New York and Nagasaki in 1995. This documentary captures the reactions of survivors. SBS, Saturday, August 7, 7.30pm.
Cheryomushki: Another Bite of the Cherry — Written in 1958, Dmitri Shostakovich's only musical took its name from the first of Khrushchev's high-rise housing blocks in Moscow. The documentary traces the evolution and history of a musical that is full of undercurrents reflecting the post-Stalin thaw. SBS, Sunday, August 8, 9.30pm.