Dementia cinema: 4 upcoming productions

It’s hard to tell whether film and television producers are making more projects focusing on Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia, but there are certainly a number of dementia-related projects in the IMDB.com database.

In recent years, Michael Haneke has come out with Amour, a film about a caregiver in Paris who suffers what U.S. health policy analysts might describe as “substantial negative consequences” of caregiving.

Jake Schreier directed Robot & Frank, an independent film about an aging cat burglar with memory problems who has a robot as a caregiver.

This year, IMDB has a wide range of listings for projects described as being “in production.”

Many filmmakers operate on a dollar-store shoestring. Long-term care (LTC) planners who want to get the concept of long-term care insurance (LTCI) or other LTC planning ideas into an independent film might be able to do so for a modest amount of cash and some help with finding people to watch the film.

For the Long-Term Care Awareness Month starting Nov. 1, organizing a simple screening of a single dementia-related video in a library or meeting room might be a good alternative to an ordinary LTC planning seminar. For the 2015 awareness month, organizing an entire festival of films featuring dementia, people who need care, and caregivers might be another possibility.

LTC planners who think bringing the makers of an independent dementia-related film to a community would be good for publicity may find that all they need to do to lure the filmmakers is to book a screening room and help pay the travel costs.

Here’s a look at a sampling of four of the dementia-related projects — including one with strong support from people who are organizing the Long-Term Care Awareness Month outreach campaign that starts Nov. 1.

It Snows All the Time

Director: Jay Giannone.

Stars: Taryn Manning, Tatyana Ali, Lesley Ann Warren.

The makers of this film are using crowdsourcing to pay some of the production costs, and they have raised much of that money from the LTCI community.

One of the executive producers is Jonas Roeser, the president of the 3in4 Association — one of the groups organizing the awareness month effort.

Erich Hover, one of the producers of the film, also wrote the story — to talk about his father’s with frontotemporal dementia. He has pledged to contribute 10 percent of the film’s profits to dementia-related research.

Dementia

Director: Mike Testin.

Stars: Gene Jones, Kristina Klebe, Hassie Harrison.

This is a much different kind of dementia-related film, and it’s getting heavy coverage from horror movie blogs.

The “psychological horror movie” features a war veteran who suffers from dementia. His family caregivers have hired a live-in nurse who “harbors a sinister secret.”

Carpe Kilimanjaro thumbnail; shows man hiking toward a mountain

Director: Zach Jordan.

Stars: Zach Jordan.

Zach Jordan is trying to raise money to create the world’s largest repository of Alzheimer’s stories. He is also working on completing a documentary contrasting his father’s experiences with Alzheimer’s and his father-in-law’s effort to climb a mountain.

Alzheimer’s Magic Mirror

Creator: Angela Oberer.

Stars: Angela Oberer, Russell Bennett Jr., Al Curl.

Life Long Productions is creating this television miniseries. The first season includes about an episode about the effects of early Alzheimer’s on a Father’s Day dinner and the time a doctor recommends that a family hire a live-in nurse.

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