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Creativity and Imagination

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06Oct

No Time to Waste: The Urgent Mission of Betty Reid Soskin

No Time to Waste introduces us to 95-year-old African American Betty Soskin, a woman who has lived through sharply dissonant epochs of racism in the United States. From birth through adulthood, she experienced the manifest race discrimination prevalent in the United States during a significant portion of the twentieth century.
20Sep

Go Gentle

In Go Gentle, the scope through which we view time is entirely different from that presented in Recorder. Ninety-year-old Shirley Rosenthal talks openly and calmly about accepting the end of her life.
11Jul

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project triggers viewers to reflect on the meaning of preserving the broader cultural memory of an entire society for 33 years through the video recordings of 24-hr news programs.
24Feb

Breath Made Visible

By presenting and teaching a form of dance that enables deep personal reflection and healing,
11Feb

The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne

The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne is a stylish, engrossing, and ultimately sad film about an 84-year-old Black American woman who achieved fame and notoriety as a world-class jewel thief in a career that spans 64 years. In the opening and closing scenes of the video, Doris, then 80 years old, is accused of stealing an $8,000 diamond ring from a Macy’s store in San Diego.
11Feb

Alive Inside: Reprise

Perhaps the greatest power of documentary film is its ability to reveal to us experiences, feelings, and events that might have otherwise remained beyond our awareness and our imagination. Two years ago in this space ( Scheidt, 2013 ), I reviewed a brief version of “Alive Inside,” a video by Michael Rossato-Bennett.
31Jan

Finding Tatanka

Videographer Jacob Bricca created Finding Tatanka to gain greater understanding of his father, Kit Bricca. He hoped to fill in blank spots that have remained in their relationship across the years and, hopefully, to reach a resolution that might enrich it. The result is a video case study of this father–son relationship and more largely, of a visionary known over the years as Kit, Chris Cougar, Buffalo, Buffalo Waves in the Breeze, and Tatanka .
31Jan

I Remember Better When I Paint

I Remember Better When I Paint is perhaps the most important documentary to date dealing with our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the nearly 47 million persons worldwide currently afflicted with dementia. It should be required viewing of every gerontology educator and practitioner, regardless of years in rank.
31Jan

There is a Place

There Is a Place is a brief video about the salutary impact that active and shared musical experience has on elders with dementia. It is a film that should come with a warning label for viewers, especially those already who know that music has the potential to reveal the essential sense of self presumed lost to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease
31Jan

Tracing Roots: A Weaver’s Journey

Tracing Roots is a thoughtful, revelatory, beautifully photographed artistic mystery involving a close association between two journeys separated by hundreds of years. The first journey was taken in the Pacific Northwest sometime between 1720 and 1853 AD by an 18-year-old indigenous male on an overland walking trip (Hebda, Greer, & Mackie, 2012).
31Jan

Forever, Chinatown

Emmy-nominated Forever, Chinatown is the most enchanting and salutary documentary film I have ever viewed. Director James Chan explores the remarkable psychological and physical embodiment of “sense of place” exuded by the artistic creations of 81-year-old artist Frank Wong.
11Oct

Grow Old Along with Me: The Poetry of Aging – Part 2

Few poets celebrate aging as exuberantly as Robert Browning in Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.” Browning’s optimistic sentiments are purposefully embodied in the title and content of this lovely film produced by videographers Anne Macksoud and John Ankele.
06Sep

Faces Places

What happens when close-up pictures of human faces are enlarged and displayed in public spaces? Faces Places is a film that invites viewers along on a road trip to see the answer to this question. Agnes Varda, a well-known French filmmaker, who at 89 is still making films, teams up with a prolific and anonymous (but internationally known) 33-year-old street artist/muralist, called JR...
11Jul

Grow Old Along With Me: The Poetry of Aging, Part 1

The prime motive behind this important and revealing video was the desire of filmmakers Anne Macksoud and John Ankele “to make a positive contribution to the issue of aging by finding wise and vital elders who would guide us through the process” (Anne Macksoud, Personal Communication, June 14, 2019).
11Feb

Quilts in Women’s Lives

Quilters. What comes to mind? If you do not quilt and know little about those who do, perhaps you see an image of a frail old woman wearing a lavender dress with a lace collar. She is seated in a rocker and stitching with needle and thread (Fons, 2018).
04Apr

Youth

Early in this film, a remark from one of its characters laments the fact that he has become known as an actor mostly for playing the role of a robot in one particular film. This remark turns out to be a reflection of the very nature of the film, Youth. Throughout much of its 2 hours, the film feels like it could have been made by a robot. The story line moves along in fits and starts, and the characters often speak their lines with an isolated demeanor rather than truly engaging with each other. Approached in the right way, however, the film can still be a pleasure to watch.
Movies About Aging and Elderhood