Medicina 70 (2024)

Tricky Memory

The lastest neuroscience discoveries show surprising results: false memories, distortion, modification, déjà vus. Our memory is affected in many ways, and deceives us every day. The very fact of recalling souvenirs modifies them. The everyday consequences are manyfold. To what extent can we rely on our souvenirs? How much credit can we give them during trials? Even more shocking, scientists have proved to be able to manipulate our memory: creating artificial souvenirs, deleting, emphasizing or restoring them on demand.

L'Épopée des gueules noires

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Dysphonias

After a premonition of an unusual bird, a father loses his voice. His daughter undertakes a search to rediscover him, through an intimate narrative that explores the past, the new facets and the silences of a man who is no longer the same.

So They Won't Say We Don't Remember

The short film is based on events surrounding a 1977 mining accident in the Donbas region that ultimately led to the mine’s closure. In the film, locals, artists, and curators traverse the surface, paralleling one of the underground routes of the Novator mine. The procession ends at the monument to the dead miners, which is located just above the site of the underground accident that led to the death of the workers. Participants walk across the postindustrial landscape of Donbas, over the plowed fields, by bushes and courtyards, connecting the ground and the underground spaces through the choreography of their bodies.

Je me souviens donc je me trompe

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The Wolf Suit

How much can you trust your childhood memories? Director Sam Firth investigates, sweeping her parents into the experiment and on a journey into the past.

Mind Games - The Experiment

Can exercise sharpen the brightest minds? In this ground-breaking experiment, four world-class gamers, competing in eSports, Chess, Mahjong and Memory Games, put this to the test.

Ballymanus

10 May 1943. Something is spotted drifting ashore off the coast of Northwest Donegal, Ireland. Something that would change the lives of the local people forever.

Forms of Forgetting

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Ashes

A cellar. A forgotten amphora. The ashes of a woman. Her granddaughter, daughter-in-law and son characterise her, entwining their memories and experiences. They reflect about filial love, gender and isolation through her overbearing nature.

RE:MEMBER

RE:MEMBER is a documentary, split into three chapters, that provides insights into the topics of memory, media, and history, specifically through the lens of two millennial participants. Through their testimonies and introspections, we start to see the rift between the media they were nostalgic for and the reality we currently live in. They also consider how our current attitudes towards media have shaped our previous environments and how we can change society to better our future generations.

Pictures of Ghosts

Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.

Pelé - A Origem

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Shâd Bâsh

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Leftovers

A manufactured memory.

The Noise of Time

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.

Unknown White Male

The true story of Doug Bruce who woke up on Coney Island with total amnesia. This documentary follows him as he rediscovers himself and the world around him.

The Basement

The village of Yahidne in northern Ukraine is coming back to life. Dogs are running around. Gardens and crops are green again. People support one another and families have reunited. In a movement of solidarity, local youth help rebuild what was devastated a year ago when Russian troops occupied the village imprisoning the villagers in the school's basement for a month. The villagers' attitudes alternate between their desire to move forward an remembering the horrors of the past. A heartwarming tribute to resilience and unity.

On Memory

Musing on the nature of memory, Don Hertzfeldt recounts stories about a kiss from The King, a floating child in a backyard and a giant foot.

Amaro: O Colégio da Memória

About to turn 100 years old, Santo Amaro School closed its doors in 2020, amid the pandemic, leaving former students in deep sorrow. The story of the school is now told by different generations of students, teachers, nuns and employees, who return to the school building to remember their time over there: an unreachable past, which, through memories, becomes present once again.

I Am Trying to Remember

Pegah talks about Gholam, a man who’s not like her father, mother, uncles, or aunts, even though he’s always present at family gatherings. Gholam films these everyday scenes with his own camera. At the time, Pegah can’t imagine what the purpose of these films might be, but she’s happy to pose before the lens of this family friend, who she’s certainly very fond of.

The Great Game

An old, ailing general is losing his memory. His anarchist son wants to connect. They share a passion for the Wild East, where grandfather was a famous explorer among Mongol tribes. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1948 in Afghanistan. Rumors say he was a British agent and gunrunner. Michael, the grandson, takes his father Søren out of the nursing home. He wants him to taste life, and he wants them to spend time together. The odd couple travel across China. They encounter temples, chiefs, and ancestors who reveal that the grandfather was a true Lawrence of the East. A man who fought to unite the Mongol tribes and defend them against the Soviet Reds.

L'ordre Français : 17 Octobre 1961

“In Algeria, we are restoring order, what we mean by French order,” declared Michel Debré, Prime Minister, under the presidency of Charles De Gaulle, in April 1956. It was, of course, order colonial in defiance of the republican order, in Algeria as in Paris where, on October 17, 1961, Algerians flocking from suburban slums were massacred by the police of prefect Maurice Papon, while they were peacefully marching for the independence of their country. On October 17, 2001, a commemorative plaque was placed in Paris on the Saint-Michel bridge: "In memory of the many Algerians killed during the bloody repression of the peaceful demonstration of October 17, 1961." A surge of racial hatred, less than 20 years after the roundup of the Jews in July 1942. An Algerian, victim of this roundup, told us, holding back his tears, "I still have nightmares."

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.

7 Vidas

A community of cats lives in the Soledade Cemetery Park in Belém. "7 Vidas" follows these animals through a fictional letter written by one of them to his former owner. With real images of the cats among graves and trees, the film builds a sensitive narrative about abandonment, freedom and memory, revealing the poetry hidden in the coexistence between life and death.

Sin libertad: 20 años después

This documentary updates the life experiences of victims of ETA terrorist activity, twenty years after the multi-award-winning documentary Sin libertad (Without Freedom, 2001). With an experimental intent, it seeks to link the present and the future through five young journalism students in their twenties who have not experienced ETA terrorism and are responsible for interviewing the victims.

Nighthouse

Shot in Havana and processed at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm, Marcel Beltrán Fernández's Casa de la noche explores those same histories from the point of view of an insider, as a lived experience that is evocatively mirrored through ripped and torn celluloid.

While You're Still You

After 50 years in theatre, film and television, Carme Elias is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Together with Claudia Pinto, a director and friend, they decide to record her last conscious voyage. The characters played by Carme accompany this difficult period, while the borders between fiction and reality disappear. While You're Still You is a constant game of mirrors, a pact of love and friendship.

Their Houses

Filmmaker Cam Archer examines and explores his ordinary, suburban neighborhood in search of hidden truths, new narratives and a better understanding of his fading, creative self. Combining heavily degraded video with personal photographs and real life neighbors, Archer re-imagines the concept of 'home video'. In an attempt to distance himself from his subjects, actress Jena Malone narrates the piece as Archer in the first person.

Las llaves de la memoria

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Mechanical

Memory is a ghost. Lucio, a printing press worker, takes one last walk around the machines with whom he shared everything. He remembers when his mechanisms used to move and through that mechanical movement he reflects about his own life.

The Forbidden Education

An analysis of the logics of modern schooling and the way of understanding education, while showing different, non-conventional educational experiences that raise the need for a new educational paradigm.

On nous appelait Beurettes

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ATAVISM

Within the video, two screens coexist. On the primary screen, a repetitive action takes place - the photo in the hands is periodically blurred. The focus of the viewer's attention is shifted to the secondary screen, which is more dynamic. The face in front of the camera, resembling clay, tries to take on images from archival photographs and video recordings.

13 novembre, nos vies en éclats

On November 13, 2015, the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, carried out by three Islamist commandos and claimed by ISIS, were the deadliest in France since the end of World War II. In the months that followed, the November 13 Program was launched by the CNRS and Inserm to study the construction of individual and collective memory around an event that profoundly marked French society. Today, the testimonies of 27 volunteers—among some 1,000 people—who participated in the study form a mosaic of experiences that shows how trauma extends beyond the immediate circle to permeate the national collective memory.