New Montreal documentary ‘Ageless’ challenges ageism

Montreal’s Cumming Centre has partnered with local award-winning filmmaker Montreal filmmaker Joshua Dorsey to produce a documentary confronting ageism and the stigma of growing older.

The documentary entitled “ageless: real talk. Real chance. To end ageism” premiered Monday night at the Gelber Conference Centre in front of a full house.

“What’s interesting about this film and one of the things that we wanted to accomplish was to get a sense of the scope, the scope of the subject matter, the scope of the issue from young to old, the scope of it from different domains of life,” said Dorsey.

After receiving a grant from the provincial government’s SRQEA program, which aims to strengthen the vitality of English-speaking communities in Quebec. The team set off all over the province in English communities where they interviewed more than 50 people regarding their experiences with ageism.

“We wanted it to be a conversation where everyone was involved,” said Dorsey. “So rather than relying on one or two experts, we said, we’re going to just from old to young, we’re going to interview everyone from experts to complete, you know, just people who’ve had personal experiences.”

“Ageism is not an older people’s problem, it’s an every person’s problem, young people face ageist bias just as much as older people, and so we tried to shine the light on creating awareness of the problem,” said Joy Lowee, social action coordinator at Cummings Centre.

But after coming across Walter and Laurence, a dynamic duo living in a rural area in northern-Quebec, Dorsey says he knew the film needed to be centered around them and how their relationship potentially revealed a future solution to the problem of ageism.

“It’s an amazing story about how this older person with so much knowledge is still working and sharing his knowledge and then this young lady is putting on a hard-hat and running a very expensive large-scale highway project, way in the north of Quebec and they are partnering together, and it’s an intergenerational story of collaboration and respect,” said Carrie Mazoff, project coordinator at Cummings Centre.

“We coined the term wisdom workers with younger people who are coming up who are eager to learn and eager to take on these really tough jobs, and the marriage of the two was just extraordinary in the film,” said Dorsey.

“Ageism is important to discuss,” said Debbie Ford Carom, “The seniors in our society are an untapped work force and I think it’s very important to recognize that. We bring a wealth of knowledge of experience!”

“If you open your heart and you see people for who they are and where they are at and don’t judge them by a number, I think that’s how we combat ageism,” said Lowee.

“The big message I think we’re trying to convey is that this is an issue that needs talking about,” said Dorsey.  “And really this film was really kind of structured as a conversation starter.”

Opening-night turned out to be such a success, the Cummings Centre announced they will be showing the 45-minute documentary three more times – twice next month in Oct. and once more in Nov.