Though it feels like the phrase “generational trauma” is everywhere these days, it’s only in the past decade that growing mental health awareness has made such terms ubiquitous. Though scientists have long studied the ways inherited trauma can actually alter our DNA, only recently have epigenetics filtered into everyday usage. But artists do not need science to tell them what they feel in their bones, and film is a powerful tool to illustrate the ephemeral memories one stores in the body.
Set between present-day Montreal and 1980s Beirut, “Memory Box” actualizes a treasure trove of unprocessed trauma in the form of a mysterious box of letters, scrapbooks, and tapes. When a curious daughter discovers a vast archive of her mother’s distant past, she begins to understand the difficult woman who raised her in new ways. As cassette recordings fade into voice memos, the work of filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas...
Set between present-day Montreal and 1980s Beirut, “Memory Box” actualizes a treasure trove of unprocessed trauma in the form of a mysterious box of letters, scrapbooks, and tapes. When a curious daughter discovers a vast archive of her mother’s distant past, she begins to understand the difficult woman who raised her in new ways. As cassette recordings fade into voice memos, the work of filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas...
- 8/5/2022
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
One of two films at the 2021 Berlinale about the lasting trauma of the Lebanese Civil War (along with the superior Miguel’s War), Memory Box follows three generations of Lebanese women, now living in Montreal, whose lives are uprooted when a literal box of memories lands on their doorstep. “It’s bad memories,” Téta (Clémence Sabbagh) tells her curious granddaughter, Alex (Paloma Vauthier), when she sees the box is from a woman named Liza Haber. It’s Christmas Eve, and these “bad memories” aren’t the kind of present Téta wants to give her daughter, Maia (Rim Turki). So she stuffs them away in a cupboard, to be dealt with at a later date.
Memory Box is “freely adapted” (as a title card states) from the real-life correspondences of its co-writer-director Joana Hadjithomas, who made the film with her husband, Khalil Joreige. As a young woman living in Beirut, Hadjithomas...
Memory Box is “freely adapted” (as a title card states) from the real-life correspondences of its co-writer-director Joana Hadjithomas, who made the film with her husband, Khalil Joreige. As a young woman living in Beirut, Hadjithomas...
- 3/6/2021
- by Orla Smith
- The Film Stage
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