‘memory film: a filmmaker’s diary’ is an immersive poetic documentary based on Jeni Thornley’s Super8 archive (1974-2003) filmed during the decades of her political and personal filmmaking, while producing ‘Maidens’, ‘To the Other Shore’, ‘Island Home Country’ and the collaborative feature ‘For Love or Money’. Documenting the activism of three decades amidst the intense sexual politics of radical feminism and social change, ‘memory film’ tells the inner story of a journey of liberation – gender fluidity, utopian feminism, love and its tribulations, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, violence against women, the desire for a world free of war and colonizing, and ultimately mortality and impermanence.
The impulse for "memory film" comes from the “Japanese death poets” who write poems about the transience of life. Householders write poems as a gift to their children – a legacy of beauty and insight gathered over years – a “farewell poem to life.”
The film journeys several pathways of liberation, including psychotherapy and spirituality as companions to political activism. Accompanied by a unique music score, with no speaking voices, the film offers a reflective experience into radical politics, social change and the dynamic interplay between the personal and the political.