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*The matinee screening on 16 November will be introduced by Sarah Wright, Professor of Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway.
Augusto Góngora, a veteran Chilean journalist and prominent chronicler of the crimes of the Pinochet regime, and Paulina Urrutia, actress, activist and politician, have been a tight-knit loving couple for over 20 years. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s eight years ago, and now they both face the inexorable and accelerating descent of his physical and mental powers together. Heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time, the story of Paulina’s warm and uncompromising dedication and Augusto’s fierce fight to hold on to his identity is a deeply affecting testimony to their love. The Eternal Memory is both an inquiry into human dignity in old age and adversity and into the mechanisms of individual and collective remembrance. What – and who – do we recall from our past? Why do we forget or suppress certain memories, and what effect does this have, on a person as well as on an entire country?
The screening on 16 November will be introduced by Sara Wright. Sarah is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London where she teaches and researches on Spanish and Latin American film, literature and cultural studies.
The Garden Cinema View:
The Eternal Memory is considerably less confrontational than recent depictions of end-of-life spousal care from Gaspar Noe and Michael Haneke and, in comparison to studies of filial grief in the wake of neurodegenerative illness in Everything went Fine and One Fine Morning, fully focused on the love of its central couple. The central theme of reconstructed memory is embedded in Alzheimer patient Augusto Góngora’s work in reporting, recovering, and processing, the atrocities of the Pinochet regime; and also in his wife’s (actress, politician, and possible angel, Paulina Urrutia) efforts to invigorate his fading memories through touch, performance, dance, photographs, and home video.