The film
Alive Inside
Music is magic. Give an elder the songs of their own life and you get the person back, even if only for a few minutes.
Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory · 2014
What it is
Where medication runs out
Michael went into a nursing home with a camera in 2012 because he saw something he could not walk away from, and filmed people around the country coming back to life the moment they heard their own music.
The camera catches something medicine cannot reach. It follows social worker Dan Cohen and others pushing a healthcare system that was not built for this, and visits families who have watched a parent return to them for the length of a song.
Along the way there are conversations with neurologist Oliver Sacks, who wrote Musicophilia, and with Bobby McFerrin, who knows what music does to a body before the mind has caught up.
It left audiences at Sundance humming, clapping and cheering.
The film won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2014, which nobody expected. Netflix picked it up, it had a national theatrical run, and it went on to win fifteen international awards. Ten years ago it was not common knowledge that music could help someone with dementia. Now people post videos of their parents listening. That is the whole point.
Sundance
2014 Audience Award
15
International awards
Netflix
Plus a theatrical run
1h 17m
Documentary · 2014
Who you will meet
The people in it
Social worker
Dan Cohen
Spent years arguing that a personalized playlist belongs in eldercare, back when that sounded like a strange thing to say.
Neurologist
Oliver Sacks
Wrote Musicophilia. Explains what is actually happening in a brain that has lost almost everything except a song.
Musician
Bobby McFerrin
Sings, and then explains why the body responds to music before the thinking part of us gets a say.
Screening for a group?
Watching online is licensed for your own home only. Under U.S. copyright law, a screening anywhere else needs a Public Performance License. The distributor's standard fee is $400, but they will work with you on it, or help you find a sponsor to cover it. Email Distribution@AliveInside.us and they will sort it out.
Then give an elder their own music
A memory player arrives loaded and ready. Buy one and a second goes free to an elder who has nobody to ask.
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