A few weeks ago, I was lucky to attend a screening of a new documentary film, Light Years. Director Claire Marie Panke has put together a beautiful and worthwhile documentary about three older adults and how they approach aging. The film would make a great supplement to classes in Elder Law or Estate Planning. Here is the film synopsis:
Light Years celebrates positive aging, creative aging, conscious aging ~ and the power and potential of midlife and beyond.
The film introduces Dee, a writer and professor who savors her life-long passion for African dance; Anita, whose work as an actress, dancer, playwright and poet spans eight decades and a host of adventures; and Paul, who started painting at 51 and helps redefine “retirement” to be more about service than shuffleboard.
Dee, Anita and Paul know that whether eighteen or eighty, we all need meaningful relationships, a sense of purpose, and an outlet for personal and creative expression. They reveal that the second half of life can yield profound rewards, modeling the ways Baby Boomers have reframed what our later years can look like.
This is the heartbeat of Light Years: the choice to remain engaged in community, to continue learning, giving back, and growing as we grow older.
As their stories evolve over several years, Dee, Anita and Paul face physical challenges and threats to their independence. Each responds with a resiliency that transcends those challenges and affirms our potential for renewal at any age.
More details are available here.
In a talk-back after the film screening, the director spoke about some of our own negative stereotypes of the elderly as "prejudice against our future selves." That was a new way (for me, at least) of thinking, and definitely made me sit up and take notice of my own attitudes and experiences. As a Trusts & Estates lawyer and teacher, I talk often about death and dying. I work with older people all the time. And now that I've turned 50, people who are 70, 75 and older don't seem that "old" any more....This film was inspiring.
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