FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 13, 2012 — A video clip from the upcoming documentary Alive Inside demonstrating the power of music to awaken and transform a man seemingly living in a stupor in a nursing home has swept the Internet with over 3.5 million views in only three days.
Debuting in New York April 18, 2012, Alive Inside tells a story of hope and beauty in places where they are hard to find – nursing homes caring for the oldest and most frail. Produced and directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett, the film follows social worker Dan Cohen as he discovers the power music has to “awaken” minds considered closed.
“No project I have ever worked on has changed me as much as this story,” Rossato-Bennett said. “It is my hope that this film awakens people’s hearts and helps make it possible to bring music to those in nursing homes, people who don’t even know how deeply they need music’s gifts.”
Alive Inside investigates the mysterious way music functions inside our brains and the ability to awaken deeply locked memories. The film features renowned experts such as neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of the book Awakenings (which inspired the oscar-nominated film “Awakenings” with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams) and Harvard-trained geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas, an internationally acclaimed authority on eldercare and founder of two movements to radically reshape nursing home care –The Eden Alternative and The Green House Project.
Thomas began working to de-institutionalize nursing homes in the 1990s based on the belief that older adults languished not because of their health, but because they suffered from loneliness, helpless and boredom.
“This is one of the first films to take a hard look at why emptiness and loneliness invade and pervade old age in modern life,” said Thomas, whose Eden Alternative philosophy, now a global nonprofit operating in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe, was the first to enliven nursing homes with music, pets, gardens and children. “What does this say about our society? And how can we use what we know about music to change the way we think about aging in contemporary America?”
To learn more, visit the film website here.
Alive Inside will be screened at The Rubin Museum of Art in New York April 18-21. Click here for show times and tickets.
Contact Kavan Peterson here for more information.
