Halfway

Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel used to say that Alzheimer Disease is like ripping pages from a book, one after the other. Up to the point there are no more pages left, only the cover is there. This description is very explicative about clinical effects of the disease but, if you want to understand his consequences on the person and his relative's lives, try to think about the noise of a page ripping slowly, imagine this noise resounding in the silence, inside of you. My father had already diagnosed Alzheimer Disease When I started filming with the camcorder the time I spent with him. I followed his declining process; I saw him loosing orientation capacity, the ability to numerate and use the right words, recognize objects and remember what they are used for. While my father was regressing to child age, I was trying to get information on how to help him, how to relieve his suffering. It was a solitary fight, not against the disease but mostly against the lack of medical services, inefficiency, bureaucracy. However just looking around I realized how many persons were facing the same problem. So I started collecting pages ripped from other books, from other lives. Then I bind them together in this documentary, giving voice and space to emotions, thoughts, facts, that science cannot describe and that, usually, remain enclosed within the home walls, locked in the still prison Alzheimer force you to be. It took me almost 6 years to produce this documentary, convinced that the stories of Vittorio, Enzo, Pina, Massimo, Rinaldo, Eva, Franco, Amedeo and many others have a meaning only if we do not confine them to oblivion. Memories are a patrimony to which we draw to imagine and built a better future. A better society is the one that does not forget, especially who is old, sick or needy.