Awarded Best Director by the Indy Film Library (Amsterdam). A haunting examination of a deteriorating mind and the void it leaves behind.Forster deserves great credit for the restraint it will have taken not to offer up something more literal, while discussing such an important topic.
“Memory Care … the long goodbye” probes both the loss of self and the loss of a loved one from brain damage or the ravages of age. Nearly 50 million people worldwide live with dementia, a number that is expected to double in twenty years. The video explores elements that touch both the afflicted and their loved ones: confusion, isolation, helplessness, hope, and defeat. Watching someone you love fade away is truly the longest goodbye.
In 2008 I was commissioned by Chicago Opera Vangaurd to create a video backdrop for Joe Tracz’s Reagan’s Children, an apolitical piece exploring the notion of fatherhood across three generations. A key component of the opera was Ronald Reagan’s battle with Alzheimer’s and his children’s witness to his decline. Shortly before the opening, my father was diagnosed with vascular dementia. For years I tried to create a piece on the concept of self––what it is and what remains once it fades––but I was unable to find a way into the project until the passing of my father in 2018, a storyteller who stopped speaking. “Memory Care … the long goodbye” came together once I discovered an objective platform that still honored my own witness. The Super 8 footage in “Memory Care … the long goodbye” was filmed by my father, drawn from the home movies he loved to make.
“Memory Care … the long goodbye” received a 4 star review from the Indy Film Library in Amsterdam, and exhibited at the Sanchez Art Center 2022 Left Coast “Art x Nature x Art” Exhibition, Pacifica, CA, screened at the Seattle Film Institute, the Prague Independent Film Festival, the Experiments in Cinema Festival, Albuquerque, NM, and Havana International Film Festival, and received Spotlight GOLD Experimental Film – Spotlight Short Film Awards 2019, 7th Logcinema Art Films, Centro Cultural Borges, Sala ” X Experiencias en Escena,” Buenos Aires, and was chosen as one of six films by the Indy film Library Amsterdam for screening in their annual Showcase of films, 2023.
To view a sample:
"Memory Care ... the long goodbye," single-channel video, 4:44 min loop 
