Amir Cohen-Shalev is a Ph.D graduate of the University of Toronto (1985). He has since taught courses in life span creativity and human development, art in old age and motion picture as educational text, at the universities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, and Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee. He is the author of Both
Worlds at Once: Art in Old Age (University Press of America, 2002).
The interface of old age and cinema provides a fascinating yet uncharted territory in the humanities and social sciences. Two central perspectives are explored: movies on old age by old filmmakers; and movies on old age by younger artists. The first perspective focuses on the cinematic representation of aging from within, whereas the second examines the ways aging is viewed from the outside. The distinction is based on the schism between the phenomenology of aging and its social representation: The one hinges on intrinsic qualities of “old age style” or “late style”; the second addresses attitudes towards old age in general as well as towards aging artists and the reception (or rejection) of their late films.
The author combines these general perspectives as it shifts between text and context, beginning with aging from the outside in order to introduce the semantics and pragmatics of the context (reception and filmmaking stylistic change, midlife images of old age), and continuing into the world of aging as cinematically represented from within, by old filmmakers, an often idiosyncratic, metaphysical and sometimes unapproachable world.
By providing a roadmap that charts previous scholarly paths of
inquiry, this book offers a panoramic view of the direction of
this new field of cinematic gerontology, and is essential reading
for students and scholars of cinema, humanistic gerontology, psychology
of art, and the sociology of old age and popular culture.
