Interview With "The Eternal Memory" Director Maite Alberdi

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[00:00:23] This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

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[00:01:48] I'm sorry. or in your dreams. I think that I really didn't expect that as a possibility. So it's very special and it's a great opportunity to give visibility to the film. Yeah, and you get that visibility with your subjects as well.

[00:03:00] Augusto, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and his wife Paulina,

[00:03:04] who were and are public figures in Chile that it's isolated from society and loneliness. And for me, that was the way that we have to understand the

[00:04:21] Alzheimer being in the world.

[00:04:23] Yeah, it really opens up the film, you realize that he always remembers the friend that he lost

[00:05:41] during dictatorship.

[00:06:45] It was always focused in the love story because that was the surprising thing for me, like how they deal with the illness and in a such a special way and understanding the Alzheimer

[00:06:54] as a context and as a challenge, not as a tragedy.

[00:06:59] So I think that, yeah, that was very particular.

[00:07:02] Yeah.

[00:07:03] Yeah.

[00:07:04] It was a really intimate approach because instead of interviewing them, you're observing reality. It's not, of course, that they have bad days, but then they have a very good day and then a bad one. And that's, it's the equilibrium of life, I think, that you're discovering that this observation that it's a four years and a half observation. And some of the footage as well that's involved is filmed, we she is to help him remember. So it's a kind of relationship that he never, he never got desperate or aggressive because she's helping him. So that is, that it's very particular.

[00:09:42] And what did we choose?

[00:09:45] It was like material that can make an equilibrium pretty powerful decision for Augusto and Paulina to participate in and open up in this way, while also not knowing exactly what was going to happen with the condition and that journey. And I'm wondering what was it like to kind of find a way of reaching a conclusion as a filmmaker

[00:11:04] to close the kind of documentary chapter of their story?

[00:12:06] remember and the things that you always remember are the are the emotions and

[00:12:11] and it's a big paradox that you have we have a character that is to pose that

[00:12:16] is he preserved the memory of a country and he's losing the memory.

[00:12:19] But at the end, it's not a paradox.

[00:13:41] For me, it's a bit balance of the personal, the love story, and the historical and cultural context was really, really well done. Going back to your previous Oscar-nominated documentary, The Mole Agent, also concentrated on an older generation, in that case specifically in a retirement home,

[00:13:44] and the isolation that exists there,

[00:13:47] watching the eternal memory, and all eight being in society and taking care with love, like, yeah, are completely for me related and in the same topic in a way, but with different approach. And probably the mole agent is a critic to society.

[00:15:05] And in this case, it's an example that I admire. Yeah.

[00:16:05] also his experience during the dictatorship in Chile.

[00:16:07] And the strength, what's really struck me was the strength of his emotional memory.

[00:16:10] How, you know, even if you can't remember certain days

[00:16:15] or certain times, it's the emotion inside

[00:16:18] that is still very much lingering.

[00:16:21] And I'm wondering how often you found yourself in moments

[00:16:24] where his memories kind of were guiding the direction

[00:17:26] it is and when more and more people discover the eternal memory, what is your hope for them to take away from from this film and the story? I think that

[00:17:33] might take away or what I wanted people to keep. It's a big lesson of love of understand second characters that you cannot put within extreme situations of course. And fiction gives you that and gives you a possibility of construct more all that world that his environment that you cannot do it in the documentary. Yeah, I'm happy it's fun,

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[00:20:22] Thank you all so much for listening as always and we will see you all next time.