Screened as part of NZIFF 2014

Alive Inside 2014

Directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett Framing Reality

As dementia continues to affect millions worldwide, this rousing and emotional documentary reveals a remarkably simple, music-based breakthrough and shows how it has already transformed lives.

USA In English
74 minutes B&W / DCP

Director, Screenplay

Producers

Michael Rossato-Bennett
,
Alexandra McDougald

Photography

Shachar Langlev

Editors

Mark Demolar
,
Manuel Tsingaris
,
Michael Rossato-Bennett

Music

Itaal Shur

With

Dan Cohen
,
Oliver Sacks
,
Samite Mulondo
,
Bobby McFerrin
,
Yvonne Russell
,
Louise Dueno
,
Cheryl Velez
,
Connie Tomaino
,
Bill Thomas
,
Michelle Van Nostrand

Festivals

Sundance 2014

Awards

Audience Award (Documentary)
,
Sundance Film Festival 2014

This year’s Sundance Audience Award winner explores the power of music to reconnect Alzheimers’ patients with their forgotten selves. Oliver Sacks and other neurology experts contribute their expertise, but it’s the case studies that carry the message home. Social worker Dan Cohen’s campaign to furnish dementia patients worldwide with custom-loaded iPods seems certain to gain traction wherever this film is shown.

“A packed audience at Sundance was invigorated by witnessing this magical, non-medical story of healing. Alive Inside was brought to full dimension by filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett’s vigorous filmic hand, blending a bedside manner with a rousing aesthetic. In this stirring documentary, Rossato-Bennett unveils the healing power of music to reinvigorate memory in nursing-home patients suffering from dementia. Rossato-Bennett follows social worker Dan Cohen, who discovered that a patient’s favorite songs are intact in a part of the brain that is still alive when all other communication and awareness seem irretrievably lost.” — Duane Byrge, Hollywood Reporter