A Kind of Madness
Love and Connection in the Storm of Dementia Film: A Kind of Madness Director: Christiaan Olwagen Producer: Wolflight Films Distributor: Amazon Prime Release Date: 2025 The one-line description of this movie most often used to
A Man on the Inside
Creating a documentary that accurately reflects day-to-day life in a residential care facility is nearly impossible. Most eldercare residences have strict policies that prohibit any video recording within the building. In 2019, Chilean filmmaker Maete Alberdi did manage to bring a film crew into an eldercare residence.
POST #10
On the Road to Older Age: Insights from the ‘Elder Odyssey’
The "road movie" is a venerable narrative tradition that has been identified with the history of American cinema in the second half of the twentieth century.
Advanced Style
Advanced Style is a documentary, released 6 years after Ari Seth Cohen, an urban photographer, started a blog by the same name at just 26 years old.
The Prospector
The Prospector is a beautifully photographed, novel, and instructive visit with Ernie Laszlo, an older resident of the historic California gold country in Mariposa, California.
Fast Forward
Preparing for the physical changes that aging will bring is not something most of us think about. Accepting the physical changes that aging will bring is not something most of us want to think about either.
I Cannot Tell You How I Feel
There have been scads of documentaries made about the experiences of adult children helping their aging parents make the transition from independent living to accepting various levels of assistance. It’s a universal theme in modern human life. The documentaries range from boring and factual, to intensely and graphically personal. I Cannot Tell You How I Feel takes a different approach—one that is visually engaging and highly entertaining, but skimpy on a coherent storyline.
Age of Adaline
Age of Adaline is a well-crafted film that presents viewers with a fantasy that many entertain—living without aging.
Alzheimer’s: What You Can Do (Part 1 of 2)
The presentation method and level of depth of Alzheimer’s: What You Can Do seem designed for general audiences seeking an update on recent treatment trends for AD and, perhaps, some encouraging news regarding progress in delaying or curing the disease.
Determined: Fighting Alzheimer’s
Determined: Fighting Alzheimer’s introduces us to a remarkable and dynamic longitudinal study begun in 2001 that tracks a community-based sample of adult children with parents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
With its central premise of a pharmacological solution for memory restoration, the Apple TV series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (Bahrani et al., 2022) is the most recent and detailed exemplar of the second narrative category.
Jules
Jules is an entertaining and engaging film. It also has, embedded within it, a refreshing regard for human oldness. On the face of it, the film shows the typical societal attitude toward older individuals. Milton and his acquaintances are often ignored or mildly tolerated. However, scattered here and there within the film are little gems of age acceptance.
The Great Escaper
Based on a true story, the film details the efforts of 89-year-old WW2 British Navy veteran Bernard Jordan to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in France.
Helping an Aging Parent: A Forty-Year Perspective Across Generations
Helping an Aging Parent is structured neatly into two halves; the first incorporates excerpts from the 1983 and 1990 films and establishes the three generations of the Honel family.
Alzheimer’s: What You Can Do (Part 2 of 2)
Alzheimer’s: What You Can Do presents a lifestyle treatment model designed to reduce multiple personal risk factors correlated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
POST #9
To Age or Not to Age: Thoughts on the film “Paradise”
Paradise, a new movie on Netflix, presents a rather intriguing storyline. Set in the future, scientists have discovered how to safely extract a designated amount of lifespan from one person and give it to another person—for a price. All that is needed is to find a match, a donor whose DNA will be accepted by the donee. (Movies set in the future have an immediate advantage. They do not have to spend much time and effort to validate their plausibility; they can simply take a far-out idea and run with it.) Despite this implausible premise, Paradise starts out as a well-made film.
Jim Vanden Bosch at Global Café
When: Nov 21st 2021 Where: Global Café Jim Vanden Bosch was recently invited by the International Federation on Ageing’s Global Café to present thoughts on the impact film can have on our personal and cultural
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
With an acerbic script by British writer Katy Brand and Australian director Sophie Hyde at the helm, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande has a modest premise.
POST #8
Can We Talk about Sex and Aging? (Part One)
“I don’t care what society says about women our age. Sex must not be taken off the table!”
This double-entendre line from the recent film, Book Club, reflects a shift in public discourse about sex and aging. The film is a jovial portrayal of four older women’s discovery of the book, Fifty Shades of Grey.
Juniper
New Zealand feature film Juniper (Saville, 2021) represents an intriguing variation on the form.
POST #7
“I Just Want Something Light!”
Many of us, at the end of a busy day, just want something light and entertaining to watch. For many individuals, this rules out watching anything to do with older adulthood; any film dealing with aging and growing older would not, by definition, be an entertaining film.
POST #6
Can You Imagine Your Older Self?
When I was in my early twenties, I wrote a really bad poem about climbing trees at different points in my life: as a little kid, and then projecting all the way into my imagined eighties.
POST #5
My Thoughts Left Word Prints on the Ground
The other night I dreamt that I was walking outside and as I walked, my thoughts left word prints on the ground. The words just spilled out and arranged themselves on the ground behind me as I moved along.
Old
Old can be interpreted as a parable of the inevitable trajectory of human life on this earth. The film obviously plays on humanity’s nearly universal fear of aging and dying.
POST #4
How to Measure Successful Aging
The concept of “successful aging” has been around for some time, and has gained increasing currency over the past few years. It is fueled by oodles of books, films, academic articles, newspaper columns, blogs, and social media musings. But how does one measure successful aging?
POST #3
Romping in Vegas: How Stories Can Impact Your Health and Longevity
Living in a society that uncritically accepts the denigration of aging and elderhood can be like living with polluted air. Polluted air will affect your health and longevity. Polluted perceptions of older adulthood can affect your emotional and physical health as well. Such perceptions of older adulthood are prevalent in the stories presented to us on TV and in films.
Lousy: Love in the Time of Dementia
This brief, thoughtful, and intriguing video by Frank Silverstein shares 3 years of visits with his parents, Joe and Lynn Silverstein, as they age-in-place in their home.
Being 97
This thought-filled, evocative video focuses on Herbert Fingarette, 97-year-old grandfather of videographer Andrew Hasse.
Inga
Inga opens and ends with two major entries (Kapitels or “chapters”) she writes in her journal. The first and briefer is “Love.” In her poetic vocal narrative, she offers her views of love’s evolving meanings and changing phases across the life span.