Memories of Freedom

Memories of Freedom is a frank, often poetic but emotionally real look at lives in San Francisco's pre-Facebook Mission District. People on the margins have run aground in residential hotels or on the needle-strewn sidewalks in the aftermath of Reagan policies. Is life in a residential hotel the dead end it feels like? Is it possible to find friends, lovers or even escape from the land of the seeming lost and forgotten? Over the span of a day and night, four lives intertwine; those of Nate, an obsessive mender of things, who even thinks he can mend people, and Henrietta, a young woman trying to make her way in a confusing inattentive world that doesn't need her at all. Tommy is a retired ex-cook from the Merchant Marine who never lost the freedom of the taste of wind and sea on his lips. Martin is a Native American slipped to living hand to mouth on the streets, a soaring spirit who has lost the dreams of his spirit home. As their paths cross, and re-cross during this warm October day, they are pushed to the brink of themselves, and their ability to survive in a world that sees them as completely expendable. Their separate yet connected experiences show the many facets of life on the precipice, exploited, ignored, or both, clinging to the last dollar, and dreaming of a home and their memories of freedom.