Don’t Forget to Remember: Filmmaker and artist unite for a personal take on dementia
Helena, mother of the artist Asbestos, in Don't Forget to Remember.
Ross Killeen and the artist Asbestos have created a powerful collaboration of documentary filmmaking and art in Don’t Forget to Remember. The documentary is an account of the artist’s experience of his mother Helena’s advancing Alzheimer's - but also a celebration of family life.
Both Killeen and Asbestos hope the project will open conversations about Alzheimer's, dementia and its impacts. Both of them have lived experiences with the disease - the filmmaker’s mother, Patricia, passed away in 2019, while Helena is at an advanced stage with her Alzheimer’s.
Don’t Forget to Remember came about after a conversation between them about their family experiences. “We chatted, and then continued to chat, and I walked away from that conversation going: ‘That felt good’,” says Killeen. “I actually hadn't really talked to anyone about it. We both felt a lightening of the load just having spoken about it, the simple conversation we had.”
For Asbestos, the film was born creatively following a 2022 exhibition. “As part of that, I placed three blackboards in the space so that people could interact with them. The idea was about thinking about what the permanency of art and the permanency of memory was. It was called Erase My Memories, and it was very much about challenging people to rethink the fragility of memory and the fragility of art,” says the Dublin artist who prefers to keep his real name and his face out of the limelight.
Supported by The Arts Council’s Reel Arts fund, the resulting documentary expands upon that initial concept and is a moving and intimate account of love and family.
“We approached it with this idea of three layers to the film,” says Killeen, who previously brought us Love Yourself Today, the critically acclaimed documentary which centred on the music of Damien Dempsey but also on the stories of his fans. “The first is to really be in the room and observe the daily routine of caring for someone and really just give an authentic, observed view of what the daily routine of life with Alzheimer's is. Second, to follow an artist and understand their process and observe their process from ideation through to the action of making the art through to the culmination and the conclusion of the work.
“Then the third was to really give Asbestos’s mother Helena a strong voice in the film. Because people have dementia, Alzheimer's, they can be very quickly forgotten. To give Helena a strong voice in the film was really important to celebrate her life and her memories and to reclaim them.”
Both filmmaker and artist shared a strong common goal - to open up conversations about people’s experience of the disease and family life. “Starting all these conversations is quite fascinating, and (hearing) how many people are touched by it,” says Asbestos.
“It was difficult at times. Ross interviewed my mum many times, pieced together the stories you hear in the film, not necessarily a linear piece, tried to create a little bit of confusion and cacophony around that and how memories change.
“I think we often forget when we're in the midst of things to stop for a second and ask the questions maybe we don't ask. I think that's the same for everyone, regardless of actually even experiencing Alzheimer's or experiencing illness. At times, we assume we know everything about the people around us. Then suddenly something comes up, and you go: ‘Oh, you never told me about that’.”
The film opens in cinemas nationwide on September 6th, while Killeen and Asbestos will also attend a special screening at The Triskel on September 15th.
“We’re going to travel down and we're going to do an event there where we screen the film, and we're going to do a Q and A,” says Killeen. “There'll be an interactive art element, and we'll be exhibiting some of the chalk drawings from the film, and that's supported by the Cork City Council and Department of Tourism and Arts and screening as part of the Cork City Nighttime Economy initiative.”
For Asbestos, it marks a return to the place where he created one of his most resonant pieces of work. What is Home? is located on Cork’s South Main Street and depicts a figure wearing a cardboard box on their head.
“It feels as if it's less my work and more work of a piece that you have ownership of,” he says of the city now. “Is Teach organisation have adopted it and done events around it.
“For me, doing that and then moving on to making the film, there's an overlap with those things about collaboration and about getting people involved and people talking about it. I think that element of collaboration, or that element of people feeling as if they have a chink of light, is really important. To me, great art is when you can see yourself in it, or where you can relate to it in some way.”
- Don’t Forget to Remember is released in cinemas on September 6th. www.dontforgettorememberfilm.com
