Inspiring Interview with "Alive Inside" Director

Wow. I highly recommend taking eight minutes to watch the interview below with the director of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Favorite, the documentary "Alive Inside," about the power of music to reach people with advanced dementia--specifically music from their childhoods. 

Michael Rossato-Bennett is so excited about the subject of his film that he would like to change the name of the film to "Make Grandma a Playlist!" He says that "music from your formative years hits you in a way that nothing else does." Rossato-Bennett was commissioned to design the website for the nonprofit Music and Memory, which campaigns to bring personalized music to nursing home residents, and he was so impressed with the program that he decided to document the work of Music and Memory in a film. 

Seventy-five percent of the people he filmed in nursing homes with advanced dementia--people who usually sit slumped down, unresponsive--"come alive" when they listen to their favorite music from their childhood and teen years on headphones. When the headphones are taken off, they are able to talk about their memories and have a real conversation.

As he says, the parts of the brain that process music are "basically spared" by Alzheimer's (and perhaps other dementias). Despite advanced dementia, all people have "life deep down inside us."

Music is not a cure for dementia, of course, but personalized music can be amazingly powerful.

Check out his interview, or my blog post last week, for more information about the film, which opened last week in select theaters across the country and will be available on iTunes and as a DVD in October.

"Alive Inside": New, Inspiring Movie About Dementia and Music

Photo courtesy of "Alive Inside"One stigma of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias is the belief that people living with advanced dementia are completely “gone”--“shells of their former selves.” A new documentary shows that people with advanced dementia who may seem to have lost their ability to speak are still capable of being roused and engaged in conversation. It turns out that music is key—specifically, individualized music from the person’s childhood and young adulthood.

Now through September, the film “Alive Inside” is premiering in select theaters across the country, and is well worth seeing if you know someone with Alzheimer’s disease or another dementia—and even if you don’t. “Alive Inside” chronicles the work of social worker Dan Cohen, founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Music and MemorySM. Cohen has campaigned for years to bring personalized music to nursing home residents in the form of an iPod or other digital device loaded with the person’s favorite music from childhood or early adulthood.Hundreds of nursing homes in the U.S. and Canada have implemented Music and Memory, and Cohen hopes the film will help bring personalized music to many more elders.

Directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett, “Alive Inside” won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and has been much anticipated because of a popular clip on YouTube. That clip shows a man named Henry with dementia who rarely speaks but “comes alive” when he listens to the jazz of Cab Calloway. “Alive Inside” includes conversations with the renowned neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, the musician Bobby McFerrin, and experts in elder and dementia care such as Dr. Bill Thomas.

Read the rest of my post on caregivers.com.