WHAT IS THIS FILM ABOUT?

It is about my parents’ life with dementia.

LOUSY is a front row seat to ground-game dementia: its impact on my parents’ life and on our family’s response. My parents cling to each other— singing, shouting and dancing— defying a world that now overwhelms them. This film documents how their love helps them cope with their dementia and each other.

The story of this film begins a few years ago when my parents both discover they momentarily don’t recognize who I am — the elder of their two adult sons. It follows them, documenting their dementia and our ways of coping.

Viewers will see moments of shocking self-awareness, when my parents acknowledge their persistent confusion. Watch the extraordinary efforts as they try to explain their circumstances, to us and to each other. What is revealed are the emotional truths that continue to guide them as they confront lives so locked in the present, that the past and the future have very little meaning.

As one healthcare student who saw the film noted, “dementia is not simply older folks forgetting things and acting a bit odd,” which is how she had previously imagined dementia. The film explores how this reality has restructured our family connections to each other, and to the world, in ways that student never imagined.

LOUSY is full of painful humor and raw emotion. It is not a fact-filled medical backgrounder with experts’ thoughtful opinions. It is our family responding in real time, as we are forced to revise our relationships and rules for engagement on the fly.

The story is a window into my parents’ world. It is a first hand look at daily life with dementia.

WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS FILM?

When I first realized what was happening, I grabbed my cell phone and filmed what I heard and saw. As a journalist, my instinct was to collect these clips and to capture the many details that I expected I would probably forget. This film is a collection of those moments. It is meant to be like digging through a shoe box of remarkable artifacts whose meanings are not always clear.

When I started editing these clips, I saw in them the map of a pathway to a terrifying destiny. At first I couldn’t look at them for more than a few minutes before breaking down in tears. I shut down the computer for weeks at a time.

Gradually, as I returned to these clips I saw they also contained something else. Despite the catalogue of upsetting changes resulting from their dementia, I could recognize that the essential elements of their characters not only endure but guide them and our family forward. What persists, and is visible here in this film, is an intense distillation of their personalities. The passions, fears, desires and grace that make my parents human, which steered our family through its colorful life, are still the key factors continuing to drive us all… through this moment as well.

Once I discovered this, finishing the film became a great joy.

WHO IS THE FILMMAKER?

Frank Silverstein was a career network and cable TV producer at ABC-News 20/20, CNN, CBS News, and MSNBC.

His stories have always focused on the struggles and passions of people in the news and behind the scenes.

He co-authored a book about entrepreneurship, ‘It’s Your Business’, published by Hachette. He also produced several independent documentaries, including: Canal Street River to River, which premiered on New York’s WNYC.

Currently he is a consultant helping entrepreneurs and other professionals to find their voice and to tell their stories in video, text and still images for broadcast and social media.