Emotional documentary on 'creeping death'

REAL LIFE, WITH HEART: Filmmaker Gwen Isaac spent four years shooting her documentary Where There is Life, which screens at the Dome cinema on Thursday night. With her is her baby Hope. Picture supplied

AUDIENCES at screenings of the award-winning documentary Where There is Life are stunned by the end, says film maker Gwen Isaac.

Then the questions start to flow.

“They are always emotional and moving affairs, these Q and A sessions, as I trust the one at the Dome will be on Thursday night.”

Described as an “ultimate grown-up love story”, Where There is Life follows the story of a Lower Hutt mum’s decline from motor neuron disease. When Isaac first saw the Eastbourne woman, she thought, ‘This woman is not going to be your everyday terminal patient’.”

“I knew doctors call MND the ‘creeping death’,” Isaac said.

“Your brain is the last thing to go, so it’s like you watch yourself dying. I was morbidly fascinated by what that meant.”

Isaac filmed Margaret Lee and her husband Stephen once a week for an hour over four years.

“At the start it was going to be about Margaret but it turned out to be more about her husband, Stephen, who emerges as the unlikely hero.”

Real life is never tidy. Isaac filmed Margaret when she was in hospital or hospice. Margaret hated those places.

“Having a terminal illness didn’t bother her as much as being institutionalised.”

But at no time did the couple ever ask Isaac to turn the camera off.

“There were rows, there was urine and faeces, but essentially there was love.”

The film celebrates the art of caring in all its horrors and joys, says Isaac.

“There are 800 new carers in New Zealand every year and, like Stephen, they are struggling. The Kiwi psyche is that you just soldier on. With our ageing population, we have a tsunami moment coming and we’re not prepared.”