This thesis documents the artistic research process underlying the short film And the Son's Heart (working title: Józef). The project investigates whether cinematic form can function not merely as a representation of memory, but as a structure immanent to a psychic state — discontinuous, fragmented, and resistant to linear narration. Working across archival footage, animation, and photochemical film shot in colour and black-and-white, the research treats each material layer as a distinct register of memory rather than a stylistic device.

The thesis is structured around three interconnected questions: whether editing, rhythm, and material contrast can model acts of remembering; whether cinematic form can work through traumatic experience rather than simply stating it; and what happens to truth when memory is assembled across different media. Drawing on Deleuze's concept of the time-image, Barthes's notion of the photographic punctum, Caruth's trauma theory, and Heidegger's thinking on authenticity, the project tests the claim that art can move beyond the mere documentation of rupture toward what Heidegger calls the "clearing of being."

A central discovery of the research concerns the unexpected role of the voice-over. Prior to the shoot, the primary emphasis was placed on montage as the organizing principle. In the editing process, however, it became clear that the voice — rather than montage or music — was uniquely capable of bridging the personal and historical registers of the film: a childhood memory of a mother's possible death and a reconstructed image from Polish historical memory concerning a son's devotion to his mother after death. The thesis further examines unresolved questions of language (Russian, Polish, or English), authorship, the politics of historical appropriation, and the unequal distribution of the privilege to leave artistic work unfinished. The project is situated within the author's position as an émigré Russian filmmaker working within Swedish arts education.