Maite Alberdi, the director who made Oscar history as the first Chilean woman to be nominated for an Academy Award, chats with The Hollywood Reporter about making her documentary 'The Eternal Memory.'
00:00I have just received a question like when are you going to make a film and it's like I make films like it's like when are you going to make your real film like your fiction film it's like your career it's going to start. I already made five films and I will continue making films.
00:18Reality is so powerful and it's so full of stories and experiences that I really don't need to write something because everything is already written in reality.
00:31It was like a very important year. All the nominees were international films and it was a big change because you didn't see that ten years ago in the Oscars and I was very proud of how the Academy opened to diversity
00:47and to show that all that stories that seems to be from so far finally are so close and we are speaking about topics that are connected to everybody.
00:59There is a lot of work to be done especially for example in documentaries that I felt that it's always a category that it's a part.
01:10The editors of the documentary spent one year 300 hours and it's a big talent but it's always like a genre that it's out in a way so I feel that there is a talent there in the documentary field.
01:25I felt I thought when I was shooting that I was making a film about Alzheimer and about how you lose memory but after five years and in the editing I realized that I was making a film about what do you always remember.
01:41I met Augusto in his last five years and I felt that I really met him because I felt that his identity was there because there are some things that he always remembers.
01:54He always remembers the friend that he lost during dictatorship. He always remembers his love to Paulina.
02:00So there are feelings that are permanent and that gave me so many layers of life.
02:08For me it was a big metaphor of what was happening in Chile the last year that was the anniversary of the coup.
02:14And what is Augusto saying is like you can erase information but the pain of a country it's always going to be there and his pain is there even if he didn't remember the dates even if he didn't remember the information that the pain is there.
02:30So I learned with the eternal memory that the emotions love and pain are permanent.
02:37I'm making a movie but it's easier to make a movie. You control everything. You write the script. The actors do what you ask to them. The problems can be resolved by money. It's everything so controlled.
02:51It's based in a Chilean novel called Las Homestidas from Alia Trabuco and it's an adaptation of the book.
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