Ex Memoria

This short is disturbing, challenging and thought-provoking. It will make every viewer think long and hard about age, and, in particular about the experience of dementia, and how we, the "younger set" regard and treat those who have dementia. The tale of Eva, and her young life in Poland in the Second World War, recalled by her now as she lives in a care home is distressing, as much by it's brevity and lack of detail, as by its' clarity. The behaviour of her clearly fond family, and her distance from their very modern way of life, with its' bewildering technology is heart breaking. How do we treat older people? How do we try to help people with dementia to understand the changing world? This is an excellent film and will be an invaluable tool for those who seek to understand the life of someone with dementia, and hope to make it as good as it can be.

I caught this at Edinburgh festival and had liked the director's previous film Song Of Songs. Not sure why he's doing a short after a feature, but whatever. I actually preferred this to the feature in many ways, it knew exactly what it was and how it wanted to do it.

The lead actress Sara K playing an old woman with dementia was just superb. The whole film is shot in long, 3 or 4 minute takes that keep her face in the frame throughout the shot while moving along, with other action swimming in and out of focus in the back of shot. So it's a tour de force performance from her and the visuals are virtuouso too, very liquid. The effect is a kind of total immersion in the momentary experience of an old woman in a old people's home. She's haunted by bits of her memory that keep coming back to her.

It's funny at times, unsettling at others. INteresting. Ought to be longer!