Documenting Life Stories & How We Get By
Reminiscence
Life Review
Memories
Memories of a lifetime are “fundamental to wisdom.”
Gene Cohen, The Mature Mind
VIDEO NARRATIVE ABOUT US
New documentaries for 2011
A COLLEGE DOCUMENTARY STUDIES CLASS set out in the fall of 2009, and again in the spring of 2011, to document the stories of elderly subjects in adult day care and a retirement community as part on the Wisdom of Age Project. Students from Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, spent four months listening to and documenting stories in narrative, photography and video. Students worked with the same subject for the duration of the project. As many of us in the culture at large fall victim to ageist stereotypes, students discovered that many of them began the project with concerns, as this student reports:
“When class first began, I thought of aging as a boring topic—the elderly to me had little life left in them and therefore couldn’t hold my attention.... After the interviews (and even more strongly after hours of editing and digesting their stories and advice) I got the feeling that there truly is so much wisdom that comes with years and aging... and not just in their stories of yesteryear, but in their opinions of their current state, and in their daily experiences.... [I]t’s not that boring (or scary) after all.”
How to carry on with the loss of a loved one. How to value relationships. How to live each day fully, regardless of age and adversity. The elderly storytellers, in fact, became good friends—still visited and not forgotten.
Age does not equate to wisdom. Yet, in a culture that too eagerly overlooks elderly women and men, such as those we came to know, stories with seeds of wisdom are there to be heard, recorded and enjoyed.