Paper Trails

Anne Deveson was a magnificent woman the first female talkback broadcaster in Australia she was also a writer activist mental health advocate and mother When director Sari Braithwaite met Anne in 2015 she was attempting to bundle up thousands of private papers for the National Library of Australia NLA Sari offered to help and over the next six months they transform Annes 85year paper trail into a mountain of neatly stacked brown boxes for the permanent collection at the NLA But during this time Annes brain starts to fail her Alzheimers the illness that took her mother and grandmother is gaining hold and she is feeling the pressure to move into care While she has stacks of miscellaneous files to sort Anne has resolved to keep living in her own home on her own terms As she seeks to make sense of her life through the archives she discovers that the storylines shes seeking to piece together are becoming harder and harder to find