War and conflict bookend this untraditional family history, Schedelbauer's exploration of how the legacy of the mid/late 20 th century's complicated histories have shaped her own familial lineage. Constructed entirely of family photos, from documents of her grandfather's questionable involvement with the Nazis, to the joint narratives of her German father and Japanese mother, and finally to her own coming of age during the first Gulf War, Memories explores the vagaries and construction of memory and history.

"Sylvia Schedelbauer's film begins with the word 'Erinnerungen' (Memories), on what looks like an innocuous photo album. The next image reveals the German Nazi emblem above that word. Behind the cover of her grandfather's album are stories of his life in the German military during National Socialism. The grandchild tries to recognize a relative she never even met in photos of the troops, a man who died at Stalingrad. After the war, Schedelbauer's voiceover continues, her father had moved to Japan as a commercial agent, where he had married a local woman.

Born in Japan, Schedelbauer herself grows up bicultural in a society that remains alien to her, and only discovers deeper reasons for her alienation as an adult: Those who do not know their roots will have an uneasy place in the present, the ‚here and now.' Both her father and mother remain silent about the past. Schedelbauer endeavours to find a narrative history to explain the photos; at the same time, she questions her search for identity."

[Festival magazine, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2005]