What is MOTHER and how did it come to be?
MOTHER is a short film about my mom, Ursula Witkowski, who passed away from complications related to frontotemporal dementia (FTD) 2 years ago. In 2022 when she was alive, I accompanied her, camera in hand, with the goal of turning this into a film documenting her illness, honoring her life, and acknowledging the many families out there who struggle with a loved one in a similar situation.
In MOTHER, I use family videos from the early 2000s to give viewers a sense who my mom used to be. I also recorded some voiceovers to add information and reflect on the person she was. The other part of the film consists of material I shot when I visited her at her care facility in Germany. I am a US citizen, but I was born in Poland and my parents fled Poland in the early 1980s to settle in Germany. There is not much dialogue in the film and my voiceover is in English.
When I visited her in the care facility multiple times over the course of one visit in 2022, I also filmed my dad, Richard Witkowski, caring for her, eating dinner with her, spending time with her. In many ways, this film is about their relationship with all the challenges FTD brought upon them.
Who initially inspired you to grapple with dementia?
When I visited my parents in Germany in 2016, I noticed a change in my mom’s behavior. After a conversation with her, she admitted that she wasn’t quite feeling like herself. She had noticed a shift but had been worried about confronting it and speaking out about it. I asked my parents to go and seek out a doctor. A few months later, she was diagnosed with FTD. Like so many other families who lived through this experience—I had never heard of FTD up to that moment. But, we were relieved to know what she was facing.
How has working on dementia-related art changed you?
My mom’s diagnosis with FTD in early 2017 encouraged me to make a film about her mother, Janina Zarzycka. She is still alive as I am typing this. She is 97 now and in great physical and mental shape.
My awareness of FTD, and dementia in general, led me to portray my grandmother and some parts of our charged history that evolve around WW2, the German occupation of Poland, how my grandmother’s family helped Polish Jews to escape the Nazis, and followed by my family’s hardship under communism.
My mom’s diagnosis helped me to realize that this film is mostly based on my grandmother’s memories. If you no longer have access to your memories and thoughts and you lose the ability to communicate with members of your family, our collective memory as a family suffers from this loss too. Both films are an attempt to undo some of that loss, or at least tackle it.
This work is dedicated to: My mom, Ursula, and all the other families who lived and are currently living through this experience.
Find more from Viktor Witkowski on his website or Instagram.
