DIVISAR

Synopsis

A character lives in an odyssey that leads him to a haven of memories. He tests and probes the functioning of his thought’s and his self before falling into a spiral which leads him to obscurity.

Directors Notes 

Memory2Motion is a joint collaboration with director Toma Knezovic and his production company Tomato Pictures, and first time director Mehdi Duman who also wrote the screenplay.

Memory2Motion is about memory, memory loss and Alzheimer’s. And how one individual is both at once a unique fountain droplet that comes from one collective source. Its about a character called Virgil that confronts his memories through a maze of confusion and old thoughts that act as obstacles on a visual journey that leads him to one particular memory, to one key memory, that holds his individuality intact.

Mehdi Duman and Toma Knezovic were interested in telling a story that touches on the fragility and resilience of memory.  Through discussions about family history, about their families who travelled through Europe at the time of the second world war, uprooted and floating from one boarder to another before settling. They were interested in telling a story that evokes the weight and effort that past generations went through.

Mehdi Duman wrote the screenplay based on a few visual memories that were dear to him and a few experiences that affected him. To write from personal experience to create a story would go direct to the heart of such a vast and universal theme, that is memory.

The locations were thought through based directly on the film’s theme. The first scene with the tree is a direct link to how our memories form and grow from what neuroscience teaches us about memory function. We chose to show the shadow of a tree with it’s dendrite form, branching out in all directions to make a direct link to that of a nerve cell and the dendrite’s that connect through a synapses to another nerve cell to form or create a memory or a movement.

Also in the second scene the vast architecture fits into the thematic of a memory palace. By using the small train station we wanted to make a connection to the running currents of electricity in the brain, with the rail’s and trains that connect one place to another, like the electrical charges that link and connect one nerve cell to another to form a memory. The scene when Virgil falls into the water, for us symbolizes the fluidity and continuity of memory.

We chose to follow one character called Virgil after the roman Augustan poet, who journey’s through his maze of memories seeking his identity. We wanted to have a direct connection to one of the first authors of ancient literature. And in so doing create a time line from antiquity to the present.

The film was produced with funding from the city of Geneva and with the help of the Divisar Dance Company and Tomato Pictures on an independent budget.