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Health & Fitness

Special Screening of My Brother's Film about Alzheimer's

When I was seventeen years old, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Over the next 15 years we watched as she regressed from an amazing, brilliant woman to a child-like state, and finally as to a non-verbal person who did not recognize anyone or anything.  In the 1930s my grandmother earned two bachelor's degrees from Indiana University (go Hoosiers!) one in nursing and one in medical German.  I would spend countless hours with her every summer, sitting in her bedroom with the dog she named after me, watching game shows and embroidering together.

 

I really miss her, and know that we are part of a growing number of families that are dealing with this awful disease. My brother Charles, who lives in Los Angeles, just directed a film about a family dealing with the same issues.

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It is being shown for one night only at Cinema Salem this Thursday, August 1st, at 8:30.

 

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Info about the film:

 

Angel’s Perch is the story of Jack, a successful young architect living in Pittsburgh, who must make the trip to his tiny hometown of Cass, WV to move his grandmother into an assisted-care facility after she is found wandering outside her home. But what was intended to be a two day, under-the-radar trip becomes more complicated when Jack is unable to move her into an assisted living facility nearby.  Torn between the career opportunity of a lifetime, caring for his last living relative and running from his own painful memories, Jack is forced to choose between standing still or facing the pain of his past, so that he can finally move forward in his life.

This is what my brother had to say:

It all started with People Magazine. In the summer of 2001 I was living in DC and my grandmother, who was then in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s and a descent into dementia, was living in a rest home in the suburbs. And for that summer I was her only relative in the city, and while I worked in a bike shop and partied away my summer, about once a week I would head out to the suburbs and read to her. I tried Harry Potter at first, but that was too long to hold her interest, and in the end we settled on People; its short articles were about subjects she liked. It was the last real time we got to spend together.

 

Ten years later, she had passed on and I was living in Los Angeles working as a filmmaker when I first read Angel’s Perch. And while the experience was very different, there were universal truths about that experience that resonated deeply with me. The sense of an inter-generational connection. The unpredictable nature of who you would be dealing with on an hour by hour or minute by minute basis. And overall, a sense of love and reverence and gratitude.

 

What I loved about Angel’s Perch was that it was a story that is so seldom told truthfully. There are a lot of cliches about aging out there, but it’s the specific details that make this story so real for me. The moments of humor mixed together with moments of pain; the ways in which our relationships with our family can bring us out of our shell in unexpected ways they were all there.

 

With every project, you’ll get a stream of feedback; actors will have input, financiers, editors, it’s a world of good input, and you need to know the spine you are holding on to every step of the way or else you’ll end up lost in a sea of helpful suggestions. With Angel’s Perch, it was the story of rebirth, of a grandmother and grandson loving each other through hard times that I held on to through every decision that I made.

 

I then set out to build a visual structure with my longtime collaborator, cinematographer Kimberly Culotta, that would complement the story without calling too much attention to itself. That would show off the natural beauty of our West Virginia setting without wallowing in aesthetic beauty without purpose. That would highlight for the audience the emotional journey that our lead, Jack, goes through. And most of all, that would bring our story to life.

 

We were lucky in our casting throughout; actors would read the script and connect with it and pass it on to other actors until we had filled it out with a great palette of talented individuals who really understood what we were going for. And we were luckier still in the locals; locals casting is always a gamble, but then some days you find a star like Homer Hunter living up a dirt road deep in the hills, and you remember stars are all around.

 

Pain is inevitable in life, but the best thing you can do with it is share it honestly, to use it as a way to connect to other human beings. Because it’s so easy to feel alone in life, especially when you are in pain, and knowing other human beings have struggled with the same things you’ve struggled with can be such a lifesaver when you are in need. And it was my honor to get the opportunity to tell this story, and get another chance to remember those moments of connection I got to have reading People Magazine.

 

–Charles Haine, February 2013


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