Another Age: Final Project Reflection

The final project for this course was a long time coming. I conducted interviews, read numerous texts on both filmmaking and old age, and watched (what felt like) hundreds of Youtube videos. I wrestled with the decision of whether to use live interviews with elderly subjects or to do something different-somethings making use of both editing techniques of activism and a talking head. I chose the latter for reasons that will follow.

The two sketches that I did were takes on the former idea. The first was a heavily edited interview with a 94 year old man. It did not include me as the filmmaker. This was a deliberate comparative/research oriented experiment. I wanted to see what something like this did to the subject first hand. I wanted to see the impersonal nature. I wanted to compare it with my second sketch, which would intentionally be completely different.

My second sketch was an interview with a 79 year old woman. It was one long, unedited, take that included me and the interviewee talking about the subjects of aging, ageism, retirement, and my project at large. The format of this sketch came more from ideas of cinema verite and raw mores of third cinema.

It was an idea of combination regarding the two sketches that helped to form my final project: "Another Age".

This project it a combo. It is an Eisensteinian montage of black and white clips of elderly people butted up against a color talking head of myself. I wanted to use the clash of the two types of film to illustrate my point about taking the featured clips' taking of humanity away from the elderly. The clips show their subjects as black and white, ephemeral, byte size, antiqued objects. They all present a facade of caring and authenticity, when in actuality they are directly degrading the people they seek to build up. My talking head is the opposite: it is me/very personal, in is a long unedited/unscripted take, it is raw, it is colored.

I chose to focus on this idea of clipped black and white PSAs/commercials (etc.) vs. my long colored talking head for a big reason. I thought it summed up what I had seen throughout the whole project. There is no lack of people who want to care and respect and help the elderly in our Western society. The problem is that even the people who do want to help put their charges in a box of fragility and senility. My video makes the suggestion that the elderly be treated as simply what they are--people. Give them back their humanity.

Another Age: Final Project

Sketch Two: Alwyn

Conversations about senior housing/representation

I recently had my friend Caitlin come to stay with me. She is currently in the process of applying to programs in gerontology and was lamenting the lack there of. It seems that there is really only one decent holistic/transdisciplinary program on Senior Housing in the US-- at George Mason in DC. It's scary and also a big shame.

We discussed the aging populations of both the US and Europe, as well as the positions elderly people hold in our cultures' and society. With the baby boomers aging and retiring and people having less children in anglo-european countries, the majority of the populations are (or soon will be) sitting at a very high median age. Increasing age averages means a necessity for increased care and representation of the elderly. Having trained carers and capable authorities on aging and the elderly will be essential to the legal and ethical care of those elderly people who require special or additional care as well as those in vulnerable positions legally or otherwise.

There are eight gerontology PhD programs in the United States. USC is the only private university with such a program and full funding is hard to come by at nearly all. Only two programs have any focus in applied public health. The field is remarkably small for what looks to be a huge demand. Who will be activists for the elderly? Can the elderly actively and radically represent themselves in a society that pushes them to the back seat?

The readings that we assigned for this class go into depth about how to shoot ethnography and how to represent the under (and well) represented. Many of them, from Mirzoeff to Nader, also cover ideas on the type of activist cinema we (or I) am attempting to shoot. While my readings on film theory certainly effect my cinematic practice, the latter mentioned texts make me question just what people and issues I want to shine my small spotlight on. Back to pragmatism and the why question.

My project seems to be moving in an educational direction--> educating the elderly on how they can empower themselves and educating the pre-retirement ages on best-practices. Of course, I am educating myself at the same time. Much of my footage and shooting has been in the form of conversation and interaction. I make no claims about being an expert on representations of the elderly, but I do have a camera, motivation, time, and a cause. By showing people what they can do and what goes on I am able to create and spread the ideas of activist cinema/documentary.

Regarding the first sketch: conversation with Graham

The edits in my first sketch were a hard decision to make. They were only necessary because the interviewee tended take a lot of tangents that were not related to the project. I had 30 minutes of footage, and a good deal of it was little stories.

I didn't include myself for the exact reason that Dr. Juhasz pointed out. The reason of power. I wanted my first video to be a more stock interview illuminating the power dynamic. It is certainly not how I plan to run my final project, but because power (and time) are such important aspects of this study on old-age I wanted some highlighting of both.

So many times we take what we want from conversation, especially with the elderly--this video is a critique of that idea. Because of the edits it is as if Graham exists as a anachronistic figure in the present sped up technological world. This is purposeful, not because I believe the preceding idea to be true, but rather because I believe the opposite to be true. Illumination via blunt edits and absence of the interviewer

Irish Ageism Commercial

This is an Irish commercial from 2008. I like the way its set up and executed--the message is delivered in a succinct yet simple way. I find the topic of ageism to one of the most interesting of this project. I've conducted three interviews now, and ageism has come up in some way, shape, or form in all of them. I like interviews to be fairly organic, so the topic has arisen on its own of via the desire of the interviewee.

Sketch One

Conversation with Graham