Description

Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory is a 2014 American documentary film directed and produced by Michael Rossato-Bennett. The film premiered in competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2014. It won the Audience Award: U.S. Documentary at the festival. The film deals with the subject of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and how music therapy can help and ease their suffering. In many chapters of the film Dan Cohen of Music and Memory places music headphones on patients and we see them become very expressive; his pioneering efforts have placed personal music players in nursing homes.The documentary follows social worker Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, as he fights against a broken health-care system to demonstrate music’s ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it. Rossato-Bennett visits family members who have witnessed the miraculous effects of personalized music on their loved ones, and offers illuminating interviews with experts including renowned neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks (Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain) and musician Bobby McFerrin (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”).”Alive Inside” is the work of director/writer Michael Rossato-Bennett and Dan Cohen, who is the founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory. Cohen goes into nursing homes and sets patients up with ipods and earphones, and plays the patient’s favorite music. This is sometimes learned from the family, sometimes from the patient, sometimes it’s an educated guess.The transformation in these patients is, I guarantee you, one of the most remarkable things you will ever see. It is pointed out that there is no medicine that can do this for these people, that they are overmedicated, and that the U.S. can save literally billions and billions of dollars by introducing this program into nursing homes. And it keeps elders out of those same nursing homes and with their families.The music awakens memories in the person, it socializes them in a way they haven’t been before, it calms them, it brings a smile to their faces. People who were sitting slumped over in a wheelchair not only begin to sing but dance. Truly remarkable.The film shows one woman who has been cared by her husband for ten years without medication by playing her music for her.I have never seen anything like this documentary, and it has really caught on with the public. A youtube video of one patient, Henry, went completely viral; the states of Wisconsin and Utah are adopting the program into all of their nursing homes, and the list of nursing homes incorporating Cohen’s program is growing daily.What Music & Memory needs now are donations, headphones, and ipods. These are always a need, though I suspect once this documentary is released he will have much more support — but he will also have a lot more interested nursing homes and people.The idea is to not throw away our elderly, but to involve the younger generation so that they can receive the gifts these wonderful people have to offer.Alive Inside is opening nationwide but only in some major cities. Hopefully this will be on demand on cable, and the DVD itself is going to become available. I urge you not to miss this incredible documentary. It will be a life-changing experience not only for you but for your loved ones.Web site: http://www.aliveinside.us/#land