Ten Glorious Seconds

2010, 10 minutes

What if love has the intensity and truth to survive one of the deadliest brain diseases of modern times – albeit for just 10 seconds?

Alzheimer’s Disease is a degenerative and terminal disease for which there is no known cure – and ALBERT has it. He’s in the last stages when all human behaviour becomes automatic, and the use of language has been lost altogether. Occasionally patients receive and return emotional signals long after the loss of verbal language and Albert’s story builds towards one such moment. His wife Josie is aware that time is running out for him and for them, and as her daily visits progress so her vulnerability, hurt and desperation becomes more apparent. What she does and says to him appears to have no impact; but as voyeurs into his mind we see that it triggers a merging desperation in his memory. We understand that Albert is everything to Josie; but what is Josie to Albert? We finally bear witness to the painful intensity which is their love as their parallel lives merge for just 10 glorious seconds.

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