12Feb
WATCH FREE! Fighting for Dignity: A Film on Injurious and Fatal Resident-to-Resident Incidents in Long-Term Care Homes
“The phenomenon of resident-to-resident incidents is now recognized as an international public health problem.” – From
Health Care
Click on any title or image to read full review
30Jan
Familiar Touch
When Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley chose an Alice Munro short story about a woman with dementia entering an aged care home as the focus for her first feature film (Far From Her, Polley, 2006), critics remarked that it was unusual—and courageous—subject matter for a young woman making her directorial debut.
08Oct
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.
03Sep
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.
01Sep
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).
10Aug
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.
31Oct
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).
18Apr
Life and Death in Assisted Living (reviewed by Eilon Caspi, PhD)
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.
11Nov
The Mole Agent
Have you ever wished to be a “fly on the wall” in a residential care facility so you could observe the kind of care being given to a family member, or just to see the kind of dynamic being played out between residents and staff? Watching The Mole Agent will give you a sense of what that would be like.
21May
Linking Up: The Graying of AIDs
Well-known gerontologist Dr. James Birren once told me that in the late 1940s, all of the gerontologists in the United States could fit comfortably in one modest size hotel meeting room. He should know; he was there. Thanks to the leadership of Birren and so many others, modern gerontology has advanced vigorously since those days. Since its founding in 1945, the Gerontological Society of America has provided a formal organization for linking the diverse disciplines defining the study of aging and aged individuals.
11Feb
From Nine to Ninety
From Nine to Ninety deals with a common family situation in the United States—providing care for older adults within a multigenerational household setting. It focuses on a single family that shares the common challenges faced by many other families that currently struggle with adult caregiving.
11May
Revolutionizing Dementia Care
Gerontologists are becoming increasingly aware of the advent and growth of the person-oriented model of care for individuals diagnosed with dementia or related conditions. Our On Film and Digital Media team has shared previous reviews of wonderful documentaries illustrating individually tailored applications of such care as creative role involvement, personalized music, and painting (Scheidt, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, respectively).
04Oct
Wrinkles
Life in a long-term care facility is rarely explored in narrative films. A couple of exceptions to this, Quartet and Assisted Living , were recently reviewed in this journal ( Vanden Bosch, 2013 ). This topic remains one of the frontiers we do not enjoy visiting in our culture.
08Aug
Assisted Living
Assisted Living is an engaging film—part fiction, part documentary—that takes us into the nitty-gritty of life in a long-term care facility in the United States. The film is unusually rich and perceptive in its portrayal of images and themes associated with aging in an institutional setting. It is the creation of a 22-year-old film student.
16Jun
Quartet
A new film directed by Dustin Hoffman, takes place in an upscale retirement home in the classical rolling countryside of the United Kingdom. One of the best things about the film is the ever-recurring stream of live and energetic classical music pouring out of it. Another is watching older professional performers play and/or sing this music.
08Feb
Fred Won’t Move Out
One of the biggest challenges in creating a narrative film around a character who has dementia is to convincingly portray the effects of that dementia. Dementia is usually not something one can “act” from internal experience. It can only be portrayed by closely observing the wide ranging effects that a cognitive impairment like dementia imposes.