85 years old and never married, Shizu has spent the past 3 decades living in one "Danchi" - the Japanese word for public housing - and filling it with the lifetime of souvenirs that have always kept her company. When the danchi is scheduled for demolition, Shizu and neighbors must say goodbye to their homes, and move into newer danchi that are too small to hold all of Shizu's mementos. This intimate documentary captures Shizu's sense of humor, and profound nostalgia, as she sorts through relics of her past, and chooses which memories she must fit into her new home, and which ones she can let go of.
An intimate portrait of the lives of Delvys and Carlos, siblings who live alone with their elderly mother in a rural part of a small Cuban town. The film portrays a family engulfed in their inner worlds. Between the sacrifices they make out of love for those who are present, and their longing for things that are absent, they struggle to find meaning as they reflect, contemplate, and carry the weight of existence, trying together, to move forward.
François Delisle draws an intimate portrait of his mother in a nursing home. A chronicle of the daily life and medical care of a woman approaching the end, treated with love, respect and dignity.
Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of control. But her grasp of reality and the control of her own mind is slipping away. Told through the lens of her grandson, the film focuses on the joyful, heartbreaking and intimate moments in the last chapters of her life.
Contrary to the public stereotype of a youthful homosexual community, gay men and women do grow old. Silent Pioneers presents an upbeat focus on the lives of these people today, showing them living full and diverse lives and sharing concerns on ageing, health and housing, with other senior citizens. It also considers how support networks within the gay and lesbian community have enriched and strengthened their individual lives.
Set in Oulton, Leeds - some of the last remaining post-war prefabricated houses in the UK are still standing. Residents of this ex coal mining village now at threat of eviction share their stories of community and family as they look to their future. ‘Hanging On’ is a docu-drama that combines artistic visuals of residents suspended in mid air, literally hanging onto their homes and audio interviews about the strength of what happens when people come together. It reminds us about the struggles of people who are slipping through the cracks of society and what it means to have a home.
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).
A poetic and contemplative journey of harmony between different forms of life that coexist on the earth. This film is a meditation on the effect of time, movement of the human spirit, and passage to new forms of life, through the eyes, ears, and bodies of three elderly land workers living in a small community in the outskirts of Bauta, Cuba.
Rua dos Lagares
Four friends in their late years share memories about their families, their lives, their loves and life in general. Through their conversation we learn about the illnesses they have overcome, their family histories, their children and their husbands. Despite growing older they refuse to “be old.” They look at their lives with joy and to the future with excitement. Life may change for them, but they still have each other.
The Walking Man follows an 82-year-old man with a passion for the cosmos who has walked the equivalent of the Earth's circumference nearly four times.
Mary Bauermeister - Eins plus eins ist drei
A poetic and metaphysical view on a daily life routine in a distant nursing home, on a top of the mountain in Uzice, Serbia – the closest place to heaven. This is the last station on earth for old people that called “clients”. While they’re waiting for the end of their lives, prisoned in a desolate nursing home and their old-dying body, they are fighting for the freedom of their soul, the only place they can feel young and alive. A fight between light and darkness, suffering and acceptance, life and death.
Director Mark Wexler embarks on a worldwide trek to investigate just what it means to grow old and what it could mean to really live forever. But whose advice should he take? Does 94-year-old exercise guru Jack LaLanne have all the answers, or does Buster, a 101-year-old chain-smoking, beer-drinking marathoner? What about futurist Ray Kurzweil, a laughter yoga expert, or an elder porn star? Wexler explores the viewpoints of delightfully unusual characters alongside those of health, fitness and life-extension experts in this engaging new documentary, which challenges our notions of youth and aging with comic poignancy. Begun as a study in life-extension, How To Live Forever evolves into a thought-provoking examination of what truly gives life meaning.
This short documentary chronicles a four-month period between 1979 and 1980 when residents of Hawaii's Sand Island "squatter" community attempted to resist eviction from the Honolulu shoreline - resulting in displacement, arrests, and the destruction of a community.
Who Wants to Live Forever, the Wisdom of Aging is a one hour documentary film about the myths, facts and contradictions in the never-ending battle for both longevity and healthy aging.
Mabel Wallace is a woman from Shinrone, Ireland. She has just turned 100. This is her story.
The chronic shortage of housing in Central Havana has pushed the city upwards, where life spills out onto the rooftops. Resilient and remarkable, these rooftop dwellers have a privileged point of view on a society in the process of major transformation.
A dash of youth, a pinch of age, and an unrecorded recipe: Mudder's Hands is a charming documentary conversation about arthritis, centered around the tradition of baking Newfoundland raisin bread.
BELOW SURFACE reveals the extraordinary power of community through an unlikely subject: a YMCA Aquafit class. The documentary gathers numerous moving stories of a multicultural and multi-generational Aquafit class to demonstrate how kindness and caring for others, combined with exercise, can be an antidote for grief, stress, and physical illness. The heartwarming honesty of the participants is a reminder of the power we all have to support one another.