“My story seems to change every time I tell it. Every time I remember my story it seems to be a different story.” Lucy Hawes is a producer and director. Her short film Amanze focuses on the portrait of Ronald Amanze, a multifaceted and dynamic individual, taking the viewer through the ever-changing turns of his life. The film follows his life growing up in Harlesden as the son of parents from the Windrush generation as he navigates his adolescence and Jamaican roots before founding the successful ‘Time Radio’ pirate station, until he receives the life changing news of a dementia diagnosis.

Ronald advocates for self expression and engagement, speaking of how both music and art are pragmatic ways to enrich and empower the lives of people with Dementia. Amanze is shot with consideration for muted London palettes, from the interior of lived in spaces to the cooling outdoors. The goals of Amanze were to dispute the popularised ideas of the experiences of those with dementia and challenge what they are perceived to be capable of.

Lucy chose to feature a quote from Ronald Amanze: "For so long I was feeling excluded from the world mainly from my experiences with Luton Council, then I went out seeking and trying to find a way to be included in the world. I made myself very busy, got myself into all of these things because I was reaching out for a form of help and therapy and inclusion. The mainstream might have good intentions, but they are so affluent and so aloof they do not understand. They have good intentions but before they activate their intentions they have to understand what they are dealing with. And they just do not understand.”