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Oscar Docs: The Eternal Memory

This month we hear from the makers of the five films nominated for the Academy Award for best feature documentary. Today, director and producer Maite Alberdi talks about her film, "The Eternal Memory" that connects the individual crisis of an Alzheimer's diagnosis to the societal need to preserve its history through the story of a prominent Chilean couple.

→ Check out the interviews with all the nominees.

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we'll continue our Oscar season series of interviews with the creators of the five Oscar-nominated feature-length documentaries. So far, we've met Bobi Wine, a Ugandan pop star, turned people's politician, and taken a trip to Tunisia, where we met a mother trying to prevent her daughters from joining ISIS in the two nominated films we covered so far.

Today, we'll look at the film, The Eternal Memory, which follows the relationship of a Chilean couple, Paulina Urrutia and Augusto Góngora, as Augusto lives with Alzheimer's disease and Paulina becomes his main caretaker. There is a political as well as personal angle to this story. As Paulina and Augusto reminisce about Augusto's professional life as a journalist, we bear witness to the collective memories of Chile that Augusto worked so hard to preserve in addition to his personal memories. We'll have a clip of that as we go from the film. Joining us now is Maite Alberdi, director and producer of The Eternal Memory streaming on Paramount+, by the way, if you want to see it. Maite, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations on your Oscar nomination.

Maite Alberdi: Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: At the top of the film, we're introduced to Pauli, who tells Augusto that her job is to help him remember who Augusto Góngora was, who he was. Why don't you start there? Who was Augusto Góngora? Who is his wife, Paulina, the other main character in the film?

Maite Alberdi: The film started with that explanation. He was a very important journalist that during dictatorship, he made Palestines cast to report on everything that was happening in the country that were not appearing in the official media. Then when democratic came back, he was the main journalist on the public television that create cultural programs. She is a very famous and important actress in Chile for theater and television. She was the first minister of culture that we had in Chile.

Brian Lehrer: This is a story of celebrity, if I can use that word, Alzheimer's disease in a family and the intersection between the personal and political. Is it fair to say that, personal and the national?

Maite Alberdi: I think, it's fair to say that. I would say, like two persons that in their works and their life. really tried to work and preserve historical memory. It seems as a bit paradox that he's losing memory when he tried to preserve it so much.

Brian Lehrer: Let me go right to the clip that we have from the film, because much of Augusto's life as a journalist did focus on preserving Chile's historical memory of the dictatorship there. He refers to his news program, Tele Analisis, and his later work directing and hosting a number of public television shows as Chronicles of Chile's History. He also participated in writing a book called Chile: la memoria prohibida. In other words, Chile: The Forbidden Memory. Here's a short clip. It's 13 seconds of Paulina reading a personal note written by Augusto in 1997, located in her copy of his book. This is in Spanish, and then we'll translate it for those of you who don't understand.

Paulina Urrutia: [Spanish language]

Brian Lehrer: Translation, "Without memory, we don't know who we are. Without memory, we wander confused, not knowing where to go. Without memory, there is no identity." He was talking at that time, I guess in the '90s, about Chile-

Maite Alberdi: Early '90s.

Brian Lehrer: -early '90s about Chilean society. Now tragic irony, here is a man who had so much to say about memory losing his memory.

Maite Alberdi: It was his book that was called Chile: The Forbid Memory. It's a reflection and a chronic about dictatorship and reflection about historical memory.

In a way, we see a man that is losing memory, but at the same time, what I learned with this film, it's that at the end, there are some things that you never forget. That is why it's called The Eternal Memory, because there are some historical pains and love that he always remember in spite that he's losing his rational memory.

For example, of course, that he cannot say which year was dictatorship, but he can narrate until the end, how he lost his friends and what did he feel with that. It's a big lesson for me of when we are trying to speak about collective memory, we don't have to narrate only events, or dates, or numbers. We have to try to narrate the pain and the emotions because you can never erase that even when you are losing memory, in this case.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if there's anybody out there who's seen the film, Eternal Memory, and wants to comment on it or ask the filmmaker Maite Alberdi a question about The Eternal Memory, 212-433-WNYC, or anybody with connections to Chile who wants to talk about the national narratives here, or anyone else, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, as we continue with our series focusing on the five feature length documentaries that have been nominated for an Oscar in this category, a series that we do every year.

There isn't a point in the film, Maite, where the viewer is made aware of how much time has passed over the course of the filming. If anything, we can only guess based on Augusto's declining state. What is the time span of the film? At what point in Augusto's illness did you and your subjects decide to film?

Maite Alberdi: There are five years.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Maite Alberdi: Yes, it's a lot. There are two years of my camera, then COVID came and Paulina shoot it for one year and a half, and then I shoot it one year and a half after pandemic too. It's a long process. I can say we don't know the time either because I think in the film, it's a 25 years' story. It's all the relationship on the film, not only the last years. I was very lucky to have that, to find materials of the beginning of the relationship that you can see how they take care of each other through the time, not only in this specific moment.

Brian Lehrer: On the pure Alzheimer's aspect of the film, the film is incredibly intimate. We get to see Augusto and Paulina experiencing this illness within their own home. She helps bathe him. She soothes him when he's inconsolable. Why did they let you capture these private moments? Why do you think they were okay with making them public?

Maite Alberdi: It was very difficult to convince her to make the film. It took me a year. At the end, he was the one that convinced her. He said to her and to me in a very clear way at the beginning of his disease, he said, "I showed so many people in my life and so many people during dictatorship, opened the door to their house, to my camera to show their pain to me. Why I'm not going to show my own fragility?" Was super clear and really brave. Paulina today say that probably that was his biggest act of consequence, to decide to pass their last days with a camera. Since the moment that they decided and he decided, they really opened the doors and they were always very free with the camera and very comfortable. Well, and it was so many years of shootings, we build our relationship. They feel comfortable with the camera and there are persons that are used to the camera too. I think that they decided to make these chronics of his fragility in a way.

Brian Lehrer: That's one of the main tools it seems to me that a documentary filmmaker needs to have, which is to gain the trust. Sometimes it does take a long time, in your case, a very long time, at least a year, and then gradually more over the five-year course of your relationship to build trust with your subjects if you're filming something intimate or challenging, which of course great documentaries so often do.

Maite Alberdi: Yes. I think that if documentary makers are in a hurry, it's very difficult to build trust. I think that one of the conditions that we have to have as documentary filmmakers, it's patience, because you need time to build relationship, and you need time also to see how life develop. Our life do not change in one week, in two weeks. Sometimes, you need time to see process, and you need time to see the life-transforming. You cannot push that. You have to be there waiting for that.

Brian Lehrer: Also for you as a filmmaker, you play with genre a little bit in this documentary. I think we can describe it as you capture Paulina acting in a play inside the documentary in which she is also discussing the theme of memory. As we hear her words, we're often focused on Augusto's face. You show his face as he processes the scene in front of him, even though it's not "real." It's a play. What was this play Paulina was in, and why did you decide to include this sort of meta aspect in the documentary?

Maite Alberdi: It's the first time that someone asked me that. Yes, it's a play that was about disappearings during dictatorship and places that militaries make tattoos. She was the main character of the play. I decided to put it because, of course, that was really related with the history that I was to work with.

At the same time, I wanted to put it because for me was very special how she decided to bring him to her work. They were a couple that decided together to do not be isolated from the world. Of course, that COVID, it make that to them, but before that, they were socializing all the time. He went to her job, they went to parties.

It was the first time that I saw a person with dementia so connected to the world. For me, it was the best example of how we have to understand the caregivers and the people that work with her in the theater integrate him. He make the rehearsal of every play, every topic. He was there and he was really connected to the world. Even if sometimes probably she can pass for embarrassing situation, she was never embarrassed to be there with him. I think that it's the brave way to deal with the Alzheimer on that period of the disease.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. A topic that often winds up in real life with people getting hidden that you bring into light and anything else that falls into that category, so instructive and so potentially helpful to everybody else who might be in that scene. For example, even though this is a couple experiencing the devastation of Alzheimer's disease, we get to see Paulina and Augusto joke around and be incredibly loving and playful.

I want to ask you about one of the other scenes in the movie. I'll ask you what you think it would mean to yourself or the world if this film actually wins the Oscar for best feature-length documentary.

The scene is that, or collection of scenes, some of the most difficult scenes in Vavo Augusto not recognizing Paulina and being afraid of losing his friends, but also losing his books. Why do you think the idea of losing his books even registered as a thing with him and troubled him so much?

Maite Alberdi: Yes. The book, I think that means so many things because we have a man that it's very special situation because as we saw it in the film, he never got aggressive. I think my theory, it's because that it's time that he has an empty space in his memory. He has a Paulina help him to remember all the time. He never really missed information because she's there patiently do it, help him to remember.

With the books, it's something that he lost a relationship with an object that was so meaningful to him because it's mean, of course, stories that he discover alone. He has that TV program for many years in the Chilean televisions called The Show of the Books where he interviewed authors of books. He's saying like, "I'm losing my friends." The book for him was an excuse to speak with friends. He usually was sitting in a coffee in Chile, in a coffee place with friends discussing books too.

It was a way to be connected to the world for him, the book. He's losing that in that moment. He's losing his connections to other worlds. I think that that is the meaning. We all, I really connect with that scene. I really understand what a book can mean in many ways, and especially to him. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: The other two nominated filmmakers who we've had on so far said if they win the Oscar for best documentary, it might actually help with the cause of democracy in Uganda in one case, or situation in the Middle East with respect to ISIS, in the other case. Your story is more personal. I don't know if the Oscar voters take social impact into account, or if they should as opposed to, which is just the best film in their opinions. What would it mean to you or to the world if you actually win the Oscar?

Maite Alberdi: I think that if we take it yes, in the social issues, of course, that for me, it's visibility for caregivers in a way that visibility also a person that it's really usually high. This year in each screening, I heard at least 10 persons that came to me and tell me, I have a parent with dementia, a couple. grandparents. I have been very surprised of the quantity of people that it's dealing with these situations and how we don't see that in our day-to-day life. That's mean that people lives alone and isolated.

I really think that it's a way to give visibility to caregivers and people that it's living through this. I think it's also a film that helped us to understand something very simple, or for me, it's a celebration of good life and good love. All of us are going to deal with illness, but it's depend of how you deal with that, what make the difference, and what you're seeing in this film, I think. For me, it's a love story in the context of the Alzheimer, but a celebration of good love.

Brian Lehrer: Maite Alberdi, that's a lot by the way. That's a lot that it would mean, director and producer of The Eternal Memory streaming on Paramount+, for people who want to see it at home, the latest guest in our series with the makers of the five Oscar-nominated feature-length documentaries. Maite, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck.

Maite Alberdi: Thank you very much.

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