It is for...

My feeling is that I must start from what I know, and what is closest to me.  In this case it means starting with the experiences of my sister J who is in the early to mid stages of Alzheimer's. Part of the reason for wanting to make this film is to be able to spend as much time as possible with her in the coming months/years.  Whether in the end I will be able to convert this time spent with her into some form of representation that J, myself and the rest of my family would be happy to have presented to the family, remains to be seen.  However I think it is interesting when artists who work in documentary attempt to work with people they are close to, be they family or friends, because of the way that the stakes are raised when it comes to being accountable and responsible for what is shown.  I have been quite closely involved with the way my wife, Leonie has been photographing her mother's world for the past 2 years, and have been fascinated by how she has had to discuss and negotiate every aspect of the public showing of the work.


In answer to your question Patrick, I hope that the film will oscillate between intensely personal, emotionally distilled moments from my time in France with J, and more objective scenes from my explorations into the scientific and social research being carried out around the problem of Alzheimer's.   I hope an audience will be drawn in by the way I represent J's situation and will perhaps start to be able to see the world through her eyes, and will want to learn more. At the same time I would like the film to repeatedly switch to the macro scale and depict the magnitude of the problem at hand and some of the new discoveries that are being made in the clinical and care field.  I am also interested to juxtapose J's situation with that of people less fortunate in their surroundings, but visiting some state run institutions which can't afford or don't know how to offer the person-centered care being developed and taught by organisations like SPECAL. Perhaps I am wanting to do too much, but I intend to look in all three directions in parallel during this research phase, then condense the material as the film starts to reveal itself.