See Memory

A painter uses art to explore memory, PTSD, and breakthroughs in neuroscience. (PBS Broadcast Premiere 2025)
by
Year Released
2022
Film Length(s)
15 mins
Closed captioning available
Remote video URL

Introduction

A painter uses art to explore memory, PTSD, and breakthroughs in neuroscience

Painter Viviane Silvera uses 30,000 hand-painted stills to explore memory, PTSD, and breakthroughs in neuroscience. Animation of her paintings combined with narration based on research by Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel and other scientists offers a visualization of the brain’s process of forming, altering and storing memories. The film visualizes how the unconscious and the conscious brain heals trauma.

See Memory explores the impact of ordinary and traumatic memories on our lives, showing how they exist differently in the brain and examining therapeutic methods that help people process and heal from painful experiences. The film redefines our relationship with memory, providing viewers with tools for understanding mental health, fostering empathy, and offering a potentially life-changing perspective on resilience and recovery.

With 320 million people worldwide suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and countless others navigating the effects of memory, See Memory holds universal appeal, offering viewers a unique experience that blends compelling visuals and transformative storytelling.

Featured review

"See Memory is a stunning dramatization of the complexity and emotional power of human memory. In a visual and narrative journey that is as haunting as it is insightful, the film offers nothing short than an entirely new way of imagining memory, trauma, presentness, and emotional experience. Its beauty is matched only by its brilliance. See Memory should be required viewing."
R. John Williams
Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, Yale University

Synopsis

SYNOPSIS

A lonely young woman moving hesitantly through the liminal space between past and present. A therapist bears witness to her trauma and the girl is transformed - she does not have to live with those memories alone anymore. No longer stuck between past and present, she strides hopefully towards a future of her own making.

Memory is the building block of our lives linking one action to the next. The links provide continuity and become the story we tell of how we became who we are. Disruptions in memory, such as PTSD, trauma and mental disorders, can prevent us from building our lives with continuity and coherence. The past interrupts the present as if it is still happening.

See Memory gives voice to the experience of deciphering disrupted, fragmented, relentless or missing memories through a unifying lens of Art and Science. Drawing on interviews with top neuroscientists and psychiatrists, See Memory uses stop action photography of the director, Viviane Silvera’s hand painted work to explore memory in a way that is both scientifically rigorous and visually striking. The film's interdisciplinary approach offers fresh insights on the crucial human experience of memory and ultimately empowers us to become creators of our futures rather than being bound by our pasts.

See Memory premiered at the Imagine Science Film Festival and since its release has screened at institutions such as The Helix Center, The Friedman Brain Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Contributors to the film include renowned researchers such as Nobel Laureate, Eric Kandel, and Director of the Schiller Lab at Mount Sinai, Daniela Schiller.

INCLUDES:

- Downloadable comprehensive 110 - page DISCUSSION GUIDE

- Downloadable MEMORY CALENDAR

- Downloadable MEDIA KIT

- 17 CHAPTERS from the film focusing on subtopics related to memory and healing from trauma.

For information on how to host a panel and screening email seememoryfilm@gmail.com

Reviews

"As a neuroscientist who studies how emotional memories are represented in the human brain, I was thoroughly impressed by the film's insights about the dynamics and subtleties of memories, and I was deeply moved by the artful way these ideas were expressed. The filmmaker was able to express scientific concepts and biological mechanisms of memory using art. During the last decade there has been tremendous interest in the science of memory, particularly in light of new discoveries on the biology of memory storage and retrieval, which may allow modifying traumatic memories. See Memory expresses these ideas in a very intuitive and artistic way."


Daniela Schiller, Phd
Director of the Schiller Lab, Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine
"The insights that are offered are both powerful and meaningful. I felt those insights washing over me like the different watercolor paintings as they flashed on the screen. This is a lovely presentation of profound ideas that are exceedingly difficult to explore in any medium, including film. The real genius of this film is a clever way of framing what are very profound statements, narrated in a careful, thoughtfully-paced way, against the backdrop of changing watercolor images."
Film Screener
D.C Shorts Film Festival
"New York City artist uses 10,000 painting stills to create animated film about the mind."
The title was inspired by Oliver Sacks’ article "Speak, Memory" and narration is based on interviews with neuroscientists and psychiatrists, including Nobelist Eric Kandel.
ArtDaily
ArtDaily
"Silvera puts memory into motion"
Nicole Teitler
Writer, Dan's Papers
"One memorable project
Arts & Living
27 East
It is truly a magnificent piece, “beautiful, ethereal, dreamlike.”
Simon Fortin
Lecturer, New York University
One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. A real experience.
Dr.Paul Browde
Dr. Paul Browde, Columbia University, School of Professional Studies
Brilliant, incredibly profound and so beautiful
Jill Eikenberry
Actor and Producer
"The response has been outstanding. The film facilitates discussion about memory and the impact of both physical and psychological trauma on memory in a very humanistic and personal way. It allows viewers to reflect on and share their personal experiences. The film opens the door to understanding the science of memory and it promotes an understanding of personal trauma and equally important an understanding about the important role of the community in helping victims of trauma through their healing process. "
Silvana Riggio
Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Rehabilitation, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Awards and Screenings

PBS Television Premiere Spring 2024
Edward Hopper House & Museum Award of Excellence
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Friedman Brain Institute
National Streaming on PBS.org Spring 2024
Mental Film-ness Film Festival
Awareness Film Festival
Viten Film Festival
Blow Up Chicago Art House Film Festival
Big Apple Film Festival
Altspace VR Scenes & Screens Film Festival

Director Commentary

I was born and raised in Hong Kong where I lived until I was 10. I then moved to Brazil for 5 years before landing in New York at the age of 15. My Hong Kong memories are often out of my reach. If memory is the story we tell of how we became who we are, who are you if your memories are not within your grasp? I set out to make See Memory to come to terms with my own fraught relationship to memory.

“Speak Memory” by neurologist Oliver Sacks, explores his childhood memories as a melding of his experiences and things he heard or read about. Emotion is the strongest encoder of memory. If you hear a story that triggers a strong emotion, you may absorb pieces of it as your own. Sacks explains that neurologically, there is no way to decipher experienced memory from imagined memory. I wanted to find out more. In interviews with psychiatrists and neuroscientists I asked - How do we remember and why do we remember?

I made See Memory with the belief that the need to understand memory and how it shapes who we are is universal. The film combines art and science, giving a vivid and visceral experience of what it is to remember and be haunted as well as enriched by our memories.


Features and Languages

Film Features

  • Closed Captioning
  • Director's Commentary
  • Transcript

Film/Audio Languages

  • English

Subtitle/Caption Languages

  • English

Promotional Material

Promotional Stills

Resources for Educators

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