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Never Actually Lost

'Never Actually Lost' is an experimental archive film, documenting the filmmaker's Grandmother, Audrey Anderson's last year of life. Based around a beautifully rich archive of 8mm films and interviews with Audrey and her daughter, 'Never Actually Lost' asks how we remember our own selves and how we attempt to remember someone else.

  • Rowan Ings
    Director
    First film
  • Rowan Ings
    Writer
    First film
  • John Archer
    Producer
    The Story of Film; Accidental Anarchist; Iboga Nights;
  • David Brown
    Producer
    The Inescapable Arrival of Lazlo Petushki, Family Portrait
  • Audrey Anderson
    Key Cast
    "herself"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Memory, Family, Home Movies, Grandmother, Mother, Daughter
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 55 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 5, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    14,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Edinburgh International Film Festival 2019
    Edinburgh
    United Kingdom
    June 22, 2019
    World
  • Underwire Film Festival 2019
    London
    United Kingdom
    September 21, 2019
    Official Selection, Nominated Best Editing
  • Leeds International Film Festival 2019
    Leeds
    United Kingdom
    November 10, 2019
    Official Selection
  • Bolton International Film Festival 2019
    Bolton
    United Kingdom
    September 30, 2019
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Hopscotch Films
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Rowan Ings

Rowan Ings is an emerging Director of creative documentary. Born and raised in Hackney, Rowan has spent her adult life between Scotland and Russia. Her work primarily concerns these places and the stories found in each. Drawn to exploring memory, trauma and female experience, Rowan's latest project, Never Actually Lost, considers these themes through a portrait of her Grandmother's dementia and death.

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Director Statement

Never Actually Lost is an exploration of memory and loss. The film began as a portrait of my Grandmother, Audrey, over the course of the last year of her life, living alone in Glasgow with dementia. Using a beautiful archive of super-8 films, shot by my Grandfather over the second half of the 20th century, as a prompt, Audrey attempted to tell the story of her life. With her memory fading, these interviews offered revelation and confusion for us both. Audrey died in the spring of 2018 and the project was left for some months. My mother, Lois, is a stone mason by trade and I wanted to record the process of her carving her own mother's grave. I became fascinated by the idea of materiality representing loss, how we hold on to physical objects after a person has died, or after our memories have faded and we can't tell the story ourselves. The links between the 8mm footage and the grave provided a basis for my film, which combines the archive footage with observational footage of Audrey and Lois, as they attempt to remember and communicate the story of a life.