MEMORY BOOKS

Ten-year-old Dennis and his sister Chrissi are two of the 2 million AIDS orphans in Uganda. It’s been almost a year since their mother died, leaving them to look after themselves in one of the so-called "children's households". Their personal "Memory Book" gives them the strength to cope. It is full of photographs, stories, tales and songs and the thoughts and wishes of their deceased parents. Harriet, Christine and Betty are HIV infected mothers writing their own Memory Books. They and their children face up to their upcoming deaths and this gives them unexpected strength and comfort. Later these books will become an important guide in the lives of the orphans. Director Christa Graf accompanies the film’s protagonists during their everyday lives. The women she portrays resist falling into the circle of lethargy, depression and desperation common for people who know with certainty that they are going to die. They have found a way of dealing with it. This is a film as touching and significant as the Memory Book project itself.

"These Memory Books, these small notebooks with pasted images and texts, written by people who hardly know the alphabet, could, in many ways, prove to be the most significant documents of our time." – Henning Mankell