From Bambi to Brief Encounter, there are films that invariably bring a tear to the eye. Others make you laugh, or want to sing or dance. Films have an extraordinary ability to rekindle emotions and stir memories from your past.
The Forget Me Not Project is developing a new activity around cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. The sessions will be offered to care homes and memory cafés which work with people living with Alzheimer’s disease. The experience for many people with dementia is that their early memories are well-preserved, but their recollection of recent events is confused or non-existent.
The sessions will explore the experience of going to the cinema: the buildings and auditoria, rolling programmes with adverts, usherettes, and the ubiquitous experience of watching the film through a fog of tobacco smoke.
We’ll be including clips from classic films of the period, encouraging participants to reminisce about their own experience of going to the pictures.
If you’d like to organise a cinema session for a group you are involved with, please email the Village Museum at enquiries@ruddington-museum.org.uk.
Note: The Village Museum is open from Easter Monday until the end of September, on Thursdays from 10am to 12 noon and Bank Holiday Mondays from 2pm to 4pm. Find out more at www.ruddington-museum.org.uk.
Gavin Walker