ABSTRACT
Documentary practice and its storytelling about and with real people living with dementia are powerful tools that bring to the fore important issues such as vulnerability and care. Hence, how these tools are employed to tell the story of vulnerable subjects has a crucial ethical dimension that affects not only the person living with dementia and the viewer but also the way caring for a person living with dementia is (re)presented and provided for. These subjects are already vulnerable in social settings because of their dementia, but their vulnerability can be further increased in a situation in which a filmmaker exerts her narrative power with the purpose of both reconstructing a past that it is no longer remembered by the person living with dementia and narrating their present. Considering two documentaries made by filmmakers about parents or grandparents living with dementia, the Mexican documentary film Tiempo suspendido (2015) by Natalia Bruschtein and El Señor Liberto y los pequeños placeres (2018) by Spanish filmmaker Ana Serret, this chapter explores the ethical boundaries of these films, which combine familial care with the documentary practice. The chapter focusses on the ethics of presenting onscreen/working with people with dementia within a familial relationship; how the use of the camera and editing might play an important role in the way people with dementia are presented and given voice; and how the latter has a critical impact on how viewers gaze at and care for those living with dementia.
