Winning Story Movie from WILDsound Festival. Poetry by Lily Lejeune

Review by Julie C. Sheppard:

The Memory Thief is a striking short that is both meditative and action-packed. The narrator’s voice is gentle and compassionate yet also makes use of emphatic pausing and word emphasis for heightened effect. The screenplay is particularly stimulating as the main character goes through many stages of awareness and location changes, which are perceptively described in fine detail.

While the imagination is stimulated as the text takes you along for the ride, it is further assisted by a slideshow of numerous startling screens of photos and CGI imagery. These images often correspond to the text directly and sometimes are more subtle, which is highly satisfying. The screenplay is often linear and direct and, at other points, ethereal and dreamlike as the central figure often questions reality.

At times, there is a real sense of claustrophobia and nightmarish imprisonment while at other moments there is an escapism into nature, but then the action culminates into a bleak determination for mass destruction. After experiencing this stark but brilliantly stimulating piece, the viewer can breathe a sigh of relief as there is an awareness that an expansive, unfettered life is still available to us all.

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