‘She lives on within our gaze.’
For decades, home recording devices have served as extensions of memory, capturing moments their owners wish to preserve. Yet, as with memories, these fragments can take on new meanings when revisited over time. The diaristic short film To Know Her by the Hong Kong director Natalie A Chao is a poignant and powerful exploration of this phenomenon. In the work, Chao revisits her family’s miniDV camcorder archive to reconnect with her late mother, who died from clinical depression when Chao was a teenager. She weaves this imagery from her childhood with new footage filmed on the same camcorder over the course of a decade, including intimate conversations with her father and sister. Through this intricate construction, Chao collapses past and present, forming a deeply personal reflection on the nature of grief and time.
