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00:00 We now have a tender and beautiful documentary from Paramount+ and MTV Documentary Films.
00:11 It is "The Eternal Memory" directed by Maite Alberde.
00:14 And Maite joins us now.
00:16 Thank you for being with us.
00:19 Thank you for the invitation.
00:21 Of course.
00:22 Your film won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance.
00:28 And this is the story of a very prominent journalist, television presenter, author Augusto
00:33 GĂłngora and his wife Paulina Urrutia, who is an actress and former Minister of Culture
00:40 in Chile, and how their relationship continued after his diagnosis with Alzheimer's.
00:49 In many ways, the relationship even deepened, but it's a beautiful love story.
00:53 And Maite, before we get into some questions, let's take a look at a clip from "The Eternal
00:58 Memory."
00:59 And this is where Paulina, or Pauli, as he calls her, La Pauli, and Augusto are on a
01:06 date, I think, at a restaurant.
01:09 And because, of course, he's suffering from memory problems, they discuss how long their
01:15 relationship has gone on for.
01:17 So let's take a look at that.
01:20 [SPEAKING SPANISH]
01:22 [SPEAKING SPANISH]
01:24 - And your mom?
01:26 - Something in between.
01:28 - Something in between? - Yes, something in between.
01:32 - How many years do you think we've been together?
01:34 - Together... like seventeen.
01:39 - Really? - Yes.
01:41 - You're close! - Yes.
01:43 - Yes? Yes?
01:44 - 18, 19, 20, 21. No.
01:47 - Let's do it between the two of us.
01:48 - Yes, between the two of us, it's not right.
01:50 - Yes, because if I do it by myself...
01:52 - I have an assignment.
01:55 - I don't remember anything.
01:59 I'm going to make a fool of myself.
02:03 - We got married three years ago,
02:07 and the best part is that we've known each other for 23 years.
02:11 - 23 years.
02:12 - So we got married 20 years later.
02:17 Or we were together for 20 years,
02:18 and then we got married 20 years after we met.
02:24 - How beautiful.
02:26 - Oh, we see how beautiful their bond is,
02:29 and how Pauli is so caring and gentle with Augusto
02:34 as he's struggling with his memory.
02:36 Augusto is a really very, very important journalist
02:40 and figure in Chile, as is Pauli,
02:44 in the world of the performing arts and acting.
02:50 And he made the decision, or they made it jointly,
02:52 for him to be very public about his diagnosis
02:55 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
02:59 So that's one thing that makes them unusual
03:01 right there as a couple.
03:04 - Yes, exactly. He was very brave.
03:07 In that moment, he was part of the committee director
03:11 of the public television,
03:12 and he openly told his diagnosis in a big magazine.
03:17 So it was a brave decision.
03:21 And I met him a couple of months after that,
03:24 and I think that the decision to make this film
03:28 was so brave as he telling the diagnosis,
03:32 because he told me and Paulina,
03:35 like, he did so many documentaries in his life.
03:39 He showed so many pain
03:41 that why he was not going to show his own pain.
03:44 And that was very special for me,
03:47 to see a man that openly speak about disease and pain.
03:52 And it was, yeah, an important way for me
03:59 to understand the approach to illness,
04:02 like to speak about it, to face it, to not hide it.
04:06 Yeah. To don't hide fragility.
04:10 - Right, which is at least in American culture
04:13 and maybe in Chilean as well, a real taboo.
04:16 I mean, we don't talk about death very much,
04:18 and we don't really like to encounter fragility.
04:22 And here, this is an unusual couple
04:24 that was willing to share that,
04:28 and almost in a sense celebrate it
04:31 as just an intrinsic part of life.
04:35 And we see in the film that Pauly,
04:37 like when she was rehearsing plays,
04:39 she would bring Augusto along with her.
04:42 So she wasn't ashamed of him.
04:44 She didn't like push him aside.
04:46 They were together in public all the time.
04:50 - Yes, exactly.
04:51 And that was my first, like,
04:55 the first surprising thing that I saw in them,
04:59 that I saw a couple that was in love.
05:03 Like he was with her in all her jobs.
05:08 Like he start living her life in society.
05:13 And in my previous films, I worked with Alzheimer before,
05:16 and I work with people that it's isolated from society
05:21 because of fragility.
05:23 And as do you say, like a culture that not only hide,
05:28 but at the same time, isolate
05:31 and not integrate into society, the illness.
05:34 So it was the first time that I saw a person
05:37 with dementia in society, being in love, being happy,
05:42 like where Alzheimer was only a talent and not tragedy.
05:47 And that was very special for me as an understanding
05:53 of how we have to take care of people
05:58 with dementia in society.
05:59 Like all the people that work with Paulina
06:02 was helping her to take care.
06:05 She was not alone in that situation before COVID, of course,
06:09 but she tried to be on the world.
06:12 And that helped him to don't get deteriorated fast.
06:17 Indeed, he deteriorated very slow
06:20 because he was in the world.
06:22 And that was unbelievable as an example for me.
06:28 - You're not sentimental at all in this film.
06:31 I think a lot of filmmakers could fall into that trap,
06:34 maybe with say musical choices they would make
06:39 to play up the sentiment, but you don't.
06:41 It's a, to me, very fresh and honest portrayal,
06:45 including his condition as it deteriorates
06:49 and the difficult moments that both of them have.
06:55 - Yes, I think it's not sentimental,
07:00 but it's very emotional.
07:03 And we live like the reality as it is.
07:09 In the film, I try to do not hide the terrible moments,
07:14 but the next day after a bad day, you have a good day.
07:21 So it's like an equilibrium between bad,
07:26 hard situations and very nice days.
07:30 And then I think that the balance, it's lightness.
07:34 And for me, it's a feeling good film
07:37 in spite that it's in an Alzheimer context,
07:42 because you see a couple that it's having good times
07:47 at the end, yeah.
07:50 - Oh yeah, it's a celebratory film, I think.
07:55 And it's just so deeply touching.
07:59 And it invites us as an audience to maybe rethink memory,
08:04 what memory means, and perhaps to think of it as memory
08:10 is not just what an individual carries with them,
08:13 but there's a collective memory.
08:16 And so Pauli in a way is the custodian of Augusto's memory.
08:21 And also gives us a sense that he will live on
08:28 even if much of what he went through,
08:32 he won't be able to access as the illness progresses.
08:36 - Yeah, it was unexpected for me
08:41 because I thought I was going to make a film
08:45 about an illness progress and about how he forgets.
08:50 And I thought it was going to be
08:52 the chronicle of the deterioration.
08:54 But at the end, I realized that I met a man
08:58 that never forgets some things.
09:01 And there were things that remains
09:05 in his body until the end.
09:07 And that were the other levels as we say
09:09 that the political memory appear
09:12 because he always remember her,
09:15 he always remember his pain.
09:17 So the deterioration do not have sense as a narrative
09:22 because we have to build the narrative of a feeling
09:27 and the narrative of a memory.
09:29 And when he never forget his pain of dictatorship,
09:33 when he never forget his job,
09:36 the things that he loves for job, the books.
09:39 And when he never forget here,
09:42 like it was like situations that bring me
09:47 to tell the story of a country,
09:49 to tell the story of a couple
09:51 and not to think only in the present of the relationship.
09:55 Because at the end, it's a film about all the relationship
10:00 in all the political context of a country.
10:04 And also in the public and private space
10:09 of that couple.
10:10 - Yes, and it's, you know,
10:13 Augusto played such an important role in his country
10:17 because during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet,
10:20 he was out in the street,
10:23 he was recording interviews with people
10:26 who would have their loved ones disappeared.
10:29 He created this kind of archive.
10:31 So it's like the memory of a country
10:33 he helped to preserve and disseminate
10:36 and got those videos of the interviews
10:39 in the hands of many, many different people
10:41 so that they couldn't be suppressed by the government.
10:44 So there's in the sense,
10:45 there's the memory of an entire country
10:48 that he helped to preserve
10:51 and makes it so poignant to think of
10:53 if he struggles with his own memory at the same time.
10:58 - Yeah, I think it's a big paradox
11:01 because yeah, as you say,
11:03 he's dealing with his memory
11:06 and at the same time,
11:07 he was so conscious all his career
11:11 that everything that he was making
11:13 was part of the preservation
11:16 of the Chilean historical memory.
11:19 And in a way,
11:22 I have been thinking that Alzheimer and dictatorships
11:24 have something in common
11:27 in the way that you don't have the control of history.
11:31 Like, and he has to live
11:36 that so much,
11:37 like to live the control,
11:39 to live the control of the narrative in a way.
11:43 And he during dictatorship,
11:47 there was a very small group of people
11:50 that may claim the finest cast
11:52 to report on everything that was happening in the country.
11:55 And that it's the only archive that we have
11:58 of dictatorship,
12:00 like the important one,
12:02 the one that the people that was in the street
12:03 with the camera
12:05 and they take that risk.
12:06 And then he wrote a book
12:08 about how to preserve that historical memory
12:12 with a speech about political memory.
12:15 That it's very, yeah, a paradox.
12:18 And at the same time,
12:19 it put the sense of the film
12:22 that there is a speech that we already discussed,
12:25 when he said in the opening of his book,
12:30 like Chileans do not have to think in dates,
12:33 in commemoration and informations.
12:36 Chileans have to build the memory from the emotions.
12:41 And the only way to make our mourning,
12:44 it's from the emotions.
12:45 And that is what the film is saying at the end.
12:48 In the scene that we have just see,
12:50 he say like,
12:51 I do not remember how many years we have been together.
12:56 But he cannot remember that.
12:58 But a couple of minutes after in the scene,
13:01 she asked him, do we have kids?
13:04 No, because you didn't want it.
13:06 And he remembered that.
13:07 And that was his pain.
13:09 And pain it's there.
13:11 And the pain of dictatorship, it's there.
13:13 So you can forget information.
13:18 You can forget dates,
13:19 but you're not going to forget the emotions.
13:22 And that is what we try to build.
13:25 And that was what he was saying in his speech about memory.
13:30 And it was what happened with his body.
13:33 And that's, it's very special for me, I think.
13:38 - And for the audience, absolutely.
13:42 The film was played around the world.
13:44 I mentioned Sundance, it played in Berlin at CPH Docs.
13:48 But I want to ask you, it has played in Chile as well.
13:51 What has the reception been like in Chile for the film?
13:55 - Yeah, it has been amazing.
13:59 It's a record of entrance in Chile.
14:03 It has been the documentary most seen in the Chilean history.
14:08 It's in the ranking of the 10 most seen films
14:15 in Chilean history.
14:18 And it has been teenagers and adults.
14:22 And for all age, the first weekend,
14:27 it was like number one in the ranking,
14:30 like first and Barbie, Barbie was second
14:34 that first weekend that we opened.
14:36 It was like, this is unbelievable.
14:38 And yeah, that's, well, it's,
14:43 there are people that are very known
14:47 and the Chilean audience love them.
14:51 But at the same time, it's a moment that,
14:54 and this is the year of the anniversary,
14:57 the 50 years anniversary of the coup in Chile.
15:00 - The coup that brought Pinochet to power.
15:04 - Yes, exactly.
15:05 And I think it was not a film things for that,
15:10 but at the end, it have an important message for Chileans
15:15 that was the one that we were speaking.
15:17 Like this year is the first year
15:19 that we have to hear a very left side, right radical,
15:24 making negationism from history and negationism
15:32 from human rights violations
15:38 that I thought that I will never hear in my life.
15:43 And this film came like to say in a way,
15:46 okay, you can try to erase information.
15:51 You can try to erase, to manipulate information,
15:54 but you cannot erase pain because pain is in the body
15:59 and it's in the body of a country
16:02 and you cannot tell another story about the pain.
16:06 And it has been very unbelievable also
16:10 how the film work for both sides.
16:13 It's like, it's not a left side film in the audience.
16:18 Yeah.
16:20 - I see, yeah.
16:21 It's not being taken in as an ideological.
16:24 - No.
16:25 - No, yeah.
16:26 Well, it is "The Eternal Memory",
16:28 "La Memoria Infinita" and then Spanish.
16:32 A beautiful film from Maite Alberti
16:35 from Paramount Plus and MTV documentary films.
16:38 Thank you so much director Maite Alberti for joining us.
16:42 - Thank you Matt.
16:43 Thank you for the invitation.
16:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]