Living Memories is a community documentary project: the result of a unique collaboration between a group of older women from Melbourne's Jewish community and twelve Media students from RMIT University.
 
Over a six-month period in 2008 nine women told stories from their lives to the students, who in turn fashioned these tales into the video documentary Portraits exhibited here.  These are stories of survival of the Holocaust and flight from the devastation of occupied Europe, of loss and strength and the rebuilding of lives on the other side of the world.  They are also stories of childhoods growing up in Shepparton, or in Egypt, or in a Melbourne orphanage; of great love, marriages, friends and children, travels and adventures. Memories fond, sad and funny.
 
Living Memories also brings to life the history of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia Victoria, in the video oral history Something Worth Doing... The RMIT students filmed fifteen extended interviews with older Jewish women who have been important in the life and development of the National Council, and wove together their anecdotes to paint a picture of a community.
 
Living Memories grows out of a series of community storytelling and writing projects led by writer and artist Nancy Sugarman with NCJWA (Vic) in the previous four years. With support from Di Hirsh at NCJWA (Vic), Nancy has coordinated Living Memories in partnership with writer/film-maker David Carlin, who researches in the field of memory studies and lectures in Media at RMIT University.
 
Living Memories is an initiative of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia Victoria, in partnership with the Media Program of RMIT University's School of Applied Communication.  The project has been generously supported by the Victorian Multicultural Commission, Ricci Swart and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).