Documentary series

Sometimes the most important moments in a life are the ones you don't recognise when they happen.

THE SERIES

Before the Memory Fades is a documentary series about my accidental entry into the film industry — and the years that followed.

I was thirty when I lost my job in Paris and returned to London with very little money and no clear idea what I was going to do.

I knocked on doors in Soho.

Most of them stayed closed.

One did not.

What began with an unpaid job in a small cinema equipment shop eventually led to projection, the Prince Charles Cinema and, unexpectedly, 20th Century Fox.

Looking back now, more than thirty years later, I realise that those experiences were not simply the beginning of a career.

They changed the way I understood cinema, work and myself.

THE FILM

Episode 1 — The Fall & The Train

At thirty, everything fell apart.

No job. No money. No direction.

Then a journey back to London, a walk through Soho and a door I almost didn't knock on.

Sometimes life moves for you.

Sometimes it pushes you out the door.

WATCH EPISODE 1

The series continues.

THE STORY CONTINUES

Each episode follows another part of the journey — from learning the machinery behind cinema to becoming a projectionist, working at the Prince Charles Cinema and eventually finding myself inside 20th Century Fox.

These are not reconstructions.

They are memories, objects, photographs and places — seen from where I am now.

WHY I AM MAKING IT

Memory changes.

Photographs fade.

Objects disappear.

People leave.

But sometimes an old photograph, a piece of film equipment or a sound can bring an entire moment back.

This series is an attempt to remember before those moments disappear.

BEFORE THE MEMORY FADES
Documentary series by Gérard Barbe

WATCH THE SERIES