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.
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.
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.
I am in awe of this film.
Every so often a film comes along that is highly entertaining to watch and is also a wonderful vehicle for exploring and presenting several elderhood and aging-related issues.
Love Limits is a transcendent film about the unique loving relationship shared by Cory Ann Rudy, age 36, and Warren Barrow, age 83. In addition to the difference in their ages, they differ in other significant ways. Cory is a White woman from a farm in upstate New York; Warren is an African-American man from Brooklyn.
The film Life and Death in Assisted Living (PBS Frontline and ProPublica, 2013: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/life-and-death-in-assisted-living/) examined the care practices of Emeritus Corporation, which at the time was the country’s largest assisted living (AL) company.
Nearly all the reviews of The Father in mainstream publications are enthralled with the film’s attempt to see dementia from the inside out—that is, from within the mind of the person experiencing dementia.
In the course of his seminal work in the dementia care field, Tom Kitwood noted that it was impossible “ … to enter fully into the experiential frame of another person, simply because each person is unique” (Kitwood, 1997, p. 71). Kitwood went on to observe that stepping into and describing the world of someone living with dementia, particularly in the more advanced stages, involved additional complexities, given that first-person accounts typically describe the early stages of dementia.
After Anthony Hopkins won the 2021 Oscar for best actor in The Father, our Dementia Together team viewed the film and found it creatively compelling and hopelessly heart-breaking—everything the cultural “tragedy narrative” around dementia would have us believe is inevitable and true.
The Guardians does have some serious flaws, both structurally and tonally. At the outset, the narrative is hard to follow because a variety of people appear and speak without any identification; we do not know who they are and what their credentials are.
Under the guise of benevolent guardianship, certain individuals in this country have learned how to use the legal system to steal the savings and property of vulnerable older adults after consigning them to a long-term care facility. These are not just a handful of bad-apple people; scores of them are operating throughout the United States—but just how many, no one knows.
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.
By speaking publicly and frankly about sexuality, Dr. Ruth Westheimer helped untold numbers of individuals overcome impediments to healthy sexual pleasure. The new film, Ask Dr Ruth, chronicles her long life, from her early childhood in Germany, to her current very active professional life.
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.