Eighty-Five Years, 2024

Digital video, sound

7:47 minutes 

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Trigger Warning:
This film contains sensitive content, including footage of a person experiencing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as scenes depicting a funeral. Viewer discretion is advised, as these images and themes may be distressing or evoke strong emotions.

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Eighty-Five Years traces my mother’s life through a selection of archival images and sound inherited from an extensive personal collection, including legal documents, letters, family albums, and an analogue music recording from her family home of fifty-five years. The film also incorporates footage captured on a mobile phone during her final months.

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Presented as a visual and auditory montage, the work sketches her journey from Trinidad to Britain. It reflects on her hopes and aspirations as a twenty-four-year-old woman moving across continents, her devotion to my father, the racism she encountered in the workplace, and her role as the family matriarch.

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The film concludes with her experience of living with Alzheimer’s disease, before dissolving into the full ritual of her Caribbean-style funeral in west London.

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Made with support for the Royal College of Art

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