In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director’s 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

This powerful documentary, first broadcast in 2009, hit a chord with thousands of people – not just those who are dealing with a relative who has Alzheimer’s. The film was an unusual departure from Sue Bourne’s normal approach because she turned the cameras on herself and her family to make the documentary. Sue’s mother Ethel has Alzheimer’s and lives in a nursing home in Scotland. For three years Sue and her daughter Holly filmed the time they spent together with Ethel. The reason Bourne wanted to make this film was that everything she had seen about Alzheimers had been terribly sad and depressing. Yet her experience with Holly and Ethel was that, in spite of her mother having Alzheimer’s, the three of them still managed to laugh and enjoy their time together.