Gan-Gan, A Short Film Celebrating An Extraordinary Grandmother Through Her Possessions

Gan-Gan is a beautiful short film by Welsh animator Gemma Green Hope who found comfort in the bevy of possessions that her extraordinary grandmother left behind.

Her tiny terraced house in Bideford was full of treasures; hundreds of books, a medusa’s head, Peter the Great’s ivory letter opener, the caul of her mother tied up in blue ribbon, a tile stolen from the Alhambra, a silk blouse embroidered by nuns, deadly poison, beautiful Pre-Raphaelite artworks, a knife carved from the wood of HMS Victory, Granny Green’s pince-nez, and diaries full of stories from a hard life well-lived. After her death in 2010, I helped my father and uncle sort through some of her possessions. I inherited some of her clothes to wear, books to read, a bicycle to ride. But how do you make sense of all the other things that someone leaves behind, the things nobody sees, boxes full of photographs, and bits of string? I used these objects alongside images and memories of my own to make this short animation, which I dedicate to her memory.

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