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Healthy Aging

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11Aug

Exercise: It’s Never Too Late

Exercise: It Is Never Too Late is the video equivalent of an energy drink, designed to perk up older sedentary viewers benumbed by myths of age-related activity. Elayne Letraunik introduces a litany of false beliefs at the outset of the film, fictions “that trick us into allowing inactivity to sneak into our lives.”
11Dec

Lolly Font, Yoga Rebel

Good things come in small packages—and brief ones as well. Though a short film, Lolly Font: Yoga Rebel has strong relevance for gerontological theorists, researchers, and educators, particularly those interested in the evolving meanings of successful aging. Director Liz Cane introduces us to 84-year-old Lolly Font, a yoga teacher nearing the end of her instructional career.
11Nov

Fear of Falling: A Matter of Balance

Fear of Falling opens with scenes of common possible hazards in the everyday environments of older adults, including stairs, escalators, carpets and rugs, sidewalks in disrepair, and bathtubs with slippery surfaces. The film’s major premise is expressed in Rooseveltian terms by host Elayne Letraunik: “Sometimes the fear can be just as dangerous as the thing that we’re afraid of.”
21Feb

The Elders: Everyone is a Story

An adult developmentalist recently told me that the main reason he enjoyed studying older adults is because “their bodies contain so many interesting variables” that are easily extracted with quantitative measures. To be sure, variable-oriented developmental science has contributed significantly to our understanding of the aging process.
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

The Age of Love

At the outset of The Age of Love , an elderly man shows videographer Steven Loring a snapshot of his wife and himself taken at night: “We were right in the woods and it was great. We could sit in the creek with a case of beer in the water. You love each other and you have a good time, no matter what you do—whether it’s drinking or walking or sitting at the fire at night.
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

Coming of Age in Aging America

Coming of Age in Aging America is perhaps the most important film to emerge to date within The New Gerontology paradigm. In contrast to the historically dour 4-D perspective on aging (decline, deterioration, dependency, depression), it is refreshingly optimistic and celebratory.
31Jan

Cyber-Seniors

Cyber Seniors documents an important program that illustrates the combined efforts of younger and older adults to bridge the “digital divide.” In a light-hearted and humorous fashion, the film introduces us to an intergenerational program designed to increase internet and social media use among elders who continue to observe computer technology from afar.
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.
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).
31Jan

The Babushkas of Chernobyl (reviewed by Rick Scheidt)

There is a magnetic attraction in the stories of elders, who by choice or happenstance, face unique, and extreme life scenarios that exceed the imaginations of those of us who live securely under the thicker part of the normal curve. The Babushkas of Chernobyl is a riveting watershed for gerontologists.
08Feb

The Stone Angel

The Stone Angel (Skogland, 2007), based on the novel of the same name by Canadian author, Margaret Laurence, takes us on a life review through the eyes and memories of its main character, 90 year old Hagar Shipley (Ellen Burstyn). Faced with undefined health issues, she fiercely resists the attempts of her son and his wife to move her into a nursing home.
04Feb

My Love Affair With the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond

Move back historically to the formal birth and popularization of Rowe and Kahn’s paradigm for successful aging. Move back still farther to the 1970 and 1980 decades where gestational studies show how environmental experiences and lifestyle account for physical and psychological changes once thought due solely to primary aging. Clearly, “successful aging” and its sibs—productive aging, positive aging, and optimal aging—have a rich vertical lineage spanning several generations of researchers.
04Dec

No Age Limit: Creativity and Aging

Old timers in gerontology will remember the challenge of its early days as we tried to convince a doubtful public as well as our skeptical students that human aging had any “up-side” at all. Successful aging was not yet a common part of our vocabulary.
Movies About Aging and Elderhood