A true portrait of love in sickness and in health endures in Dear Audrey. The film, which is now streaming for free from the NFB, observes the latest act in the relationship between acclaimed filmmaker Martin Duckworth and his wife, photographer/activist Audrey Schirmer. Director Jeremiah Hayes offers an intimate glimpse into the couple’s life as he chronicles Duckworth’s care for Schirmer as she goes through advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. This is a moving story of enduring love as Dear Audrey chronicles the shared passions of Duckworth and Schirmer, weaving together archival images of the early days of their relationship with vérité images of their latest act.
“Audrey changed so slowly, and retained all of her basic characteristics,” Duckworth told Maurie Alioff in an interview with POV. “I was hardly aware of the change taking place. We continued to make love, as always. And she continued driving for many years. Even when losing her sense of memory and being lost, it was hardly any different for me. It’s funny, no matter how much she disintegrated as a person, she remained strongly the Audrey I had known.”
Dear Audrey debuted at RIDM in Montreal where it won the Audience Award before taking Martin and Audrey’s story around the world where it moved audiences and scored accolades in festivals from Phoenix to Brussels to Madrid to Tokyo. It earned three Canadian Screen Award nominations including Best Documentary Feature, but most of all, it’s a worthy doc portrait of two voices that devoted their lives to art and activism.
