Silver screen: the film festival putting older people at the heart of the plot
A woman with a silver bob sits with her husband and their middleaged son, leafing through a family photo album. They come across a picture of a beautiful young woman: full lips and a gorgeously contemplative smile. “You used to be the most beautiful woman in the world,” her husband says. She retorts: “I’ve never heard that one before.”
The roomful of viewers explode into laughter. It is a chilly autumn evening and they are gathered in a community centre in LauchhauLauchäcker, in the German city of Stuttgart, eating popcorn and watching the documentary Vergiss Mein Nicht (Forget Me Not).
The reason for the laughter? The woman on screen has Alzheimer’s, and her pithy rejoinder is a rare moment of self-aware clarity. The film follows the 73-year-old Gretel Sieveking’s struggle with the illness; it is directed by her son, David.
The room can relate: this is a screening at the European Film Festival for Generations, Europe’s biggest festival about – and for – older people. “My brother had dementia but he had his family’s support,” says Elise Neumaier, 81, who is attending with her husband of 57 years. “It’s a wonderful way to show how to care for someone with dementia. However, it can vary from person to person: not everyone with dementia behaves like Gretel in the movie. Some are difficult to handle.”
The festival’s mission is to create awareness about ageing, touch on the challenges faced by the elderly in European cities and foster dialogue in a country whose demographics are fast changing. A recent study by Eurostat of member states revealed that low birth rates and higher life expectancy meant Germany had Europe’s lowest share of young people, at 13.2% of the population. It predicted that the country’s share of older people, meanwhile, would spike as the baby boomers retire.
The festival is a rare case in Europe of those challenges being addressed. Ranging in subject matter from urban bureaucracy to illness and immigration to existential angst, the programming includes films from Germany, Canada, Turkey, Belgium, the UK and Switzerland, often followed by Q amp;As.
One documentary, called Trockenschwimmen (Dry Swimming), follows a group of older women learning to overcome their fear of water; unpleasant brushes with authority feature in the British hit I, Daniel Blake as well as in Für immer Dein(Forever); while in Leanders Letzte Reise(Leander’s Last Journey), a grandfather and granddaughter connect during a perilous journey to Ukraine to trace their roots.
Unlike most cultural events, this festival is the brainchild of a municipal health department – the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt – and is conducted in cooperation with the geriatric studies department of Heidelberg University. This year, the festival’s eighth edition, Stuttgart joined as a co-host; more than 200 venues across Germany now host screenings, from community centres to care facilities with mobility access.
“This summer we had an edition of the festival in the Portuguese city of Covilhã,” says Matthias Roos, the festival coordinator. “The bi-annual Intergenerational film festival in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium is inspired by our concept, and a UK partnership will have screenings in London, Manchester and Liverpool.”
The organisers chalk the positive reception up to the lack of similar platforms to address the issues around ageing. The Stuttgart edition saw packed auditoriums and enthusiastic post-screening debates. No surprise, perhaps: there are nearly 1.6 million people with dementia in the country – two-thirds with Alzheimer’s – and the number is expected to grow to 3 million by 2050.
“Usually films only talk about the catastrophes of ageing and falling ill, and the portrayal is often negative,” says Sieveking, whose Vergiss Mein Nicht has been used as a guide for students in geriatric education. “But my film is hopeful in the way that it provides valuable lessons on how important family support is for an elderly person living with a disease like Alzheimer’s. It gives people courage to talk about it and deal with the disease.”
It also raises new issues. In the film, Sieveking and his father interview an untrained foreign worker who cannot speak German to be his mother’s caregiver. As the country has a lack of trained professionals in elderly care, the Bonn Association for Healthcare in western Germany is training refugees to take on such roles.
Festival director Michael Doh, who is also a gerontologist at Heidelberg University, says he wanted to show the various dimensions of ageing. “Often, the screened movies show the ambivalent process of ageing and deal with challenges, risks, loss and new chances.”
The themes seemed to resonate. Bundhilde Laboon, 83, applauded the documentary Das Lied des Lebens (The Song of Life), which follows a composer involving the residents of an elderly care centre in his experimental choir. “This is a very interesting experiment,” she says, “far from what usually happens in old age homes, where people are mostly sedentary.” Laboon came with a friend who is hard of hearing and lives on his own, encouraging him to participate in the discussion.
Doh argues Germany’s ageing is not just a societal change. “There needs to be more solidarity among communities, and they must reflect on bringing generations together to throw light into the process of ageing,” he says.
For Hilde Martin, 83, the benefits were more straightforward. “Singing is always stored in the longterm memory,” she says of the documentary about the choir. “When you sing old songs it refreshes the older memories, which is good exercise for people with Alzheimer’s. Also, the movie was an experiment: it seems like the participant had fun. And
that’s what is more important.”
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