Nostalgia is something that happens to everyone. Memories as bittersweet enthuse to our minds as we recollect down that path. Everyone has been sat around projector screens or books, huddled around as greasy fingers carefully flip through polaroids and now swipe our smartphones, tagging people in the memories we hold dear. With this abundance and need to freeze frame our lives, and people hit at the constant barrage, nostalgia is highly important because when we grow old, they gradually become our home. And when we start to debilitate, our memories are all we have to reconnect with our family.
Oscar winning film makers TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay, who won for Best Documentary with Undefeated, present this truly haunting and beautiful film. Pulled from an audio interview with Martin’s grandparents, this little project, My Favourite Picture Of You is full of heart. Set to an audio clip of his grandfather asking questions as his grandmother struggles to answer them, the screen goes through young and youthful pictures of them together.
It may seem like a simple premise but this small documentary hits all the write emotional notes. Set impeccably to the conversations, the timing and the bittersweet narrative is warming. Noted, though not expressed, the grandmother has cancer and her mentality isn’t sound. As her husband walks them through memories that she can’t get recollect and tells him so through laboured breath. It is so beautiful in its pain, the documentarY’s strength is the real people at the heart of this sad but superb story.
Sadly, his grandmother died a month after filming. But luckily for nostalgia and memory, they have this fitting and exquisite tribute to her. Now go and find your family and listen to their stories.
https://vimeo.com/77062487
