The first installment of HBO’s four-part Alzheimer’s Project, The Memory Loss Tapes follows seven men and women in varying stages of Alzheimer’s disease, simultaneously revealing the devastating erosion of identity that the disease brings and the resilience of the self. Each individual story provides an additional view of intertwined memory and identity, while at the same time suggesting that there is an essence to each person that remains untouched by the deterioration of the memories built throughout a lifetime. This film provides a personal portrait of the complex and difficult disease that scientists are still struggling to understand and treat.