Sunday, August 3, 2014

NZ Film Festival: Alive Inside……Inspirational movie. If you see this simple idea, YOU CAN CHANGE SOMEONE’S LIFE




If you see this simple idea in action, you can maybe transform the final years of someone you love - and it is so simple.....

If you have a family member or a friend with dementia this documentary is a MUST SEE. The film shows that the power of music, via an Ipod, can truly raise the comatose “from the dead”. 

When you watch the filmmaker turn on a patient’s favourite music, there is an instant transformation. Watching the faces of the elderly who are otherwise helpless and lifeless, suddenly become animated and tell us the name of their favourite song – and sing along with all the words, brought tears to my eyes (and I noticed the bloke next to me had something itchy on his cheek too). One woman patient pushed away her walker and began to dance to a Latin American jazz tune (in time to the beat, she grasped the filmmaker as her partner, and turned him around in time to the music. It was truly breathtaking.


Hearing is the first sense we acquire in the womb and the last to go at death. While scientists do not really understand how the brain processes all this information, what is certain is that once you can find out what music loved ones listened to and loved when younger, replaying it again as memory fades, allows patients to return to a former period in life when they felt safe and loved, rather than the scary unknowable world they currently inhabit as memory deserts them. 


If you missed the film at the festival – there is a lot of info out there on the internet and YouTube talking about the movie and the research behind it. With this information you can truly transform someone’s life and old age. Thousands of people have already done so for their loved ones.

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