Was I there?

Cold Knap Lake by Gillian Clarke

We once watched a crowd

pull a drowned child from the lake.

Blue lipped and dressed in water’s long green silk

she lay for dead.

Then kneeling on the earth,

a heroine, her red head bowed,

her wartime cotton frock soaked,

my mother gave a stranger’s child her breath.

The crowd stood silent,

drawn by the dread of it.

The child breathed, bleating

and rosy in my mother’s hands.

My father took her home to a poor house

and watched her thrashed for almost drowning.

Was I there?

Or is that troubled surface something else

shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows

where satiny mud blooms in cloudiness

after the treading, heavy webs of swans

as their wings beat and whistle on the air?

All lost things lie under closing water

in that lake with the poor man’s daughter.

This poem for me, makes me think of memory in a very different way. From what I understand of it, the lake is a metaphor for the author's head, and the lake itself consists of her memories. These memories then get muddled and cause false memories, like the memory of her mother saving the child from drowning. I've always liked it as it presents an excellent metaphor for the experience of having a false memory.

Here is another piece of artwork dealing with false memories, called False Memory Archive which is currently touring the UK: http://www.falsememoryarchive.com/

There is also some compelling court cases which may question the use of repressed memory as the main argument for a prosecution of defense, purely under the argument of a false memory having  been created. It is interesting to see either side of the argument:

Catalyst: False Memories - ABC TV Science

I think this may be an interesting topic to create a film based on memory. You could go in many directions with it and it provides some flexibility to be very creative in the way I approach it.