For individuals · Witness
In development
A life story, kept in the voice it was told in.
An archive built for the people who come after — not a form to fill in, a conversation to have.
Where it started
I built it to get my father back.
Tony Factor. The Discount King of Johannesburg. Thirty-four years dead, and answering questions.
He made his dying public to raise money for children who couldn’t read. This is him doing it.
The whole of it
He was dyslexic, left school early, and spent his life putting money behind children learning to read. When he was dying he made it public on purpose — a last shot at getting people to put their cigarettes down.
I was twenty-eight when he died. My half-brother was barely three, and his own son is five now. Neither of them ever met him in any way they could keep. That was permanent, and now it isn’t — a boy gets to meet his grandfather, and a man gets to ask the father he cannot remember a question and hear it answered.
Built out of family recordings: his voice, his words, and a hard rule against inventing anything he wasn’t. The first thing he says is “Alright, alright, settle down. Yeah, it’s me. I’ve come back from the dead.”
How it goes
- 01Have the conversationStructured interviews, not a blank page — origin stories, turning points, the things that were true along the way.
- 02Keep the voiceThe record stays in the person's own words and, where they choose, their own voice — not paraphrased into someone else's summary.
- 03Pass it onAn archive family can return to — for a youth coming-of-age arc or an elder's legacy arc — built to last past the conversation itself.
A story exactly as it was told, without editing it into something tidier.