still kicking: documentary film on aging women

Still Kicking: six women of Project Arts & Longevity documentary

Director's Statement

I wasn't convinced I was the right person to make a film capturing elderly, artistic women. However, I had just completed a documentary on an aging female storyteller, and I was captivated by her spirit in becoming old. Age tends to strip away the facade we develop through a lifetime, leaving an honesty and wisdom worth recording and passing on.

I am intrigued by aging and how one copes with it mentally and physically. Are there formulas or secrets that will lead to fuller lives for the very old? Fortunately, Amy Gorman and Frances Kandl were searching for similar answers, so my appropriateness to document this subject became clear.

Soon after the interviews began, I realized I would need several additional visits by myself to capture their activity and round out their stories, and besides, I enjoyed being with them. I was personally enriched by this one on one time with these ordinary, extraordinary women. Each one unique, yet I am convinced, all revealing common threads of wisdom that only come at the end of life's spectrum. I hope still kicking is a catalyst, prompting us to the possibilities demonstrated by these women, that growing old surely is an opportunity we all can enter with anticipation.

What about the war?

I got involved in Project Arts & Longevity after several women had been interviewed and a couple of recitals performed. The concert at the end of Still Kicking was actually the first sequence I filmed. It took place on March 31, 2003, eleven days after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

There was much discussion of the decision to go to war throughout the following months of filming. 578 combined years on earth amounts to a lot of wisdom concerning war and the current state of our country. Not one individual approved of the decision to invade, and many expressed concern that at no other time in their long lives had events seemed so bleak. Some of these feelings are expressed in the film, particularly from Grace, Ann, and Lily. Overwhelmingly however, they choose not to focus on the negative, but direct their attention to the positive aspects in their lives and events they had some control of.