Maite Alberdi: “I make observation films, my theme is the fragility and isolation of people”

from berlin – In movies like eleven o’clock and the Oscar nominee the mole agentthe chilean filmmaker Mate Alberdi He mainly focused on the life of the elderly, always using a playful and friendly side, celebrating and accompanying his characters in specific situations of their lives, whether they were meetings around a tea with friends or that tender and infatuated spy in a retirement home. As much as there are serious problems – illnesses, deaths – around the characters, so much one breathes affection, affection, understanding.

infinite memory it is a continuation, to a certain extent, of this research. It is a film centered on the relationship between the Chilean journalist Augusto Gongora and his wife, actress Paulina Urrutia, particularly focused on the time after Góngora was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Renowned political and cultural columnist, famous interviewer and television presenter, Góngora was also part of the resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship thanks to underground television news that was filmed and broadcast hand in hand during the hardest years lived. in this country. After the return to democracy, Augusto became an everyday face, respected and loved in Chile, a specialist in interviewing people of culture (in the film you can see notes to Raul Ruiz, Gustavo Cerati, Javier Bardem and others) and politics.

Married to Urrutia, actress who became Minister of Culture under the first presidency of Michelle Bachelet, both announced in 2014 that Góngora had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And it was he himself who wanted Alberdi to film the care, the processes and the difficult evolution of the disease. What the director did, with the essential collaboration of Urrutia, was to center her film on the relationship between the two after these degenerative changes. It is, more than a film about the disease, a film about the care, the solidarity and the affection of this loving relationship and the way in which together they decide to face a battle which, as we know, is lost in ‘advance.

Before the arrival of the pandemic, which complicated the filming of the film but, fundamentally, accelerated the involution of Augusto’s health, Paulina took him to his acting classes, classes, performances, walks and his meetings, making him these “conversations with friends”. as he says himself, act as palliatives and help in the face of impending and progressive memory loss. But the confinement that followed largely prevented this and complicated things, accelerating the degenerative process. Although the film is respectful of privacy and modest in relation to what it shows, it is clear that in recent times Góngora’s health has become much more complicated.

“The show was very exciting,” says Alberdi the day after the presentation in Berlin of the documentary, which had already been applauded and awarded at the recent Sundance festival. The director was here accompanied by Urrutia herself, who was present at the performance and whose presence aroused a long standing ovation. “We got together and when Paulina’s passport was stamped, the migration officer looked at her and asked her worriedly who she had left Augusto with… Everyone is very attentive and concerned about her story. They were very generous in telling it and Paulina became the spokesperson for caregivers and families who have a disabled loved one.

–How did you approach them and how did you get involved in this project?

-I knew them as public figures. I admired Augusto’s work and was impressed when he told in an interview that he had Alzheimer’s disease, the naturalness with which he did it. I started calling Paulina, interested in telling her story, but she didn’t answer me. And one day, they both came to see me in a film class I was giving at the university she runs. And I saw there how she integrated him into her life, how they had a good time together, she took him to work, to do activities. And I loved it. He was the one who finally said yes, he wanted to do it. He had a clear speech, he said that all his life he had filmed fragile people, who suffered and who always opened the doors of their homes to him, so why wouldn’t he do the same with me? He was very clear and consistent about the importance of registration. For me, it was to say a love story about how to live with Alzheimer’s disease without isolation.

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–In addition to the excellent archival material of Góngora as a journalist in her various roles, the film has another clear division between what you film before the pandemic and what Paulina herself films during quarantine. How did you handle this problem?

-I always say that the film was shot by the three of us. The previous home movies, filmed by Augusto, what I did and what Paulina filmed. With the quarantine, we thought we were going to have to cancel or suspend filming because we couldn’t go to film. But one day, I sent him the camera, showed him some stuff and we tried to see what was going on. At first it was all pretty blurry (laughs) but then amazing material started coming out. In a sense, we kept each other company during the pandemic, we talked and followed what was happening. I had to open up to a style I wasn’t used to, but the camera was also a great companion for both of us in those days. The problem is that Augusto got a lot worse during this period: no social life, no therapy. According to his doctors, his condition was getting worse month by month, which would normally take a year.

–When do you decide to close? When did you make the decision to say “so far I’ve been filming”?

-It has always been difficult to define. “Until the end”, I said at the beginning, I didn’t want them to put limits on me. Ten, fifteen years, whatever it took. That’s why we finance it ourselves, so that we don’t have a delivery date. But as Augusto got worse very quickly in the pandemic, we realized that we had to stop. We agreed with the son that the end was when he no longer recognized Paulina, but what happened was that even prostrate and almost without speaking, he continued to recognize her. The end was not death but the “end” of this relationship in terms of memory. But it’s still intact. We realized that we had to stop, all the same, when I felt that he was no longer aware of the camera, that he was no longer communicating. My cinematographer was his television cameraman and Augusto always knew how to defend the camera. The day he stopped doing it, to understand who we were and what we were doing there, we realized that we had to stop. One day he said, “I am no more. For us it was a clear “we have come this far”.

–The fact that his journalistic work has always been focused on preserving the social, cultural and political memory of the country is very strong. This clandestine documentary material shot during the dictatorship is impressive…

-They recorded VHS, circulated the material from house to house, distributed it, people recorded it and smuggled it out. They did 45 episodes of “Teleanalysis”. The most incredible thing for me is that when the change of command of Pinochet A patrick aywin the transmission is through the face and voice of the military government, but when he is passed the presidential sash, the transmission cuts off and the one who appears is Augusto. This is the first face we see of democracy. He hosted for many years on the public channel, then he did movie shows, things that I saw when I was eight years old. My first approach to cinema, the person who interested me and started to like it all, was Augusto.

–Your theme is this, clearly: old age, the fragility, the vulnerability of the elderly. Why do you think you care so much?

I don’t do interviews. I make observation cinema. And I believe that in life people don’t change. In screenwriting schools, you learn the dramatic arcs of the characters, the hero’s journey, but people don’t change much. There are two periods when yes: in childhood and in old age. And these changes are palpable on camera. I love children, but there are often rights issues in working with them. Anyway, More than old age, my theme is the fragility, low visibility and isolation of people and situations of this type. Before, I filmed people with dementia, but I had never seen someone who lived socially and happily like Paulina. The idea of ​​living with the environment, everyone caring and mobilizing for someone in need. In the pandemic, for example, with Zoom, we all started to be more publicly open with our fragility, our vulnerability. “I have to go take care of my son,” I said in the middle of the meeting and I would never have done it before. We all have a public life and a private life but we have to start showing this fragility and live with it without being ashamed of it.

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