Photography, theatre and a lot of media criticism make all the difference in this active ageing project that we started in the District of Les Corts.
Last May we screened the short
film Las Joyas de la Corona
at Les Corts Town Hall. In the midst of the applause, voices were heard saying: “An unforgettable experience”, “A dream come true: Being actresses and making a film”, “At first we thought we were not capable… But we did…” They were the men and women protagonists of the short film, a group of elderly people from the Casal Can Novell.
A year ago, we were invited to work in Les Corts to develop a project called La Gran Gent Gran. From the beginning, everyone was willing to discuss and analyze how older people are represented in the media. The aim of this project was to raise public awareness about ageing through innovative methodologies that mix media criticism and audiovisual co-creation.
According to data from the National Statistics Institute, by 2050 people aged over 65 will represent more than 30% of the total Spanish population. In addition, the birth rate in Europe tends to fall while the percentage of elderly people rises. And the news warns us that octogenarians will exceed the figure of four million in 2020. If this is the reality, we must ask ourselves, how do we perceive the elderly?, how will new generations be able to take care of them if they do not know them, if they isolate them, if they look at them through stereotypes?
During the process of The Great Seniors, we made a tour of the multiple realities, virtues and needs that surround the elderly, and from there we set out to dismantle the stereotypes that try to homogenize, infantilize and even hide their valuable contribution to society. Part of these stereotypes come from the mass media that depict the elderly as a social and health burden or as isolated beings who should give us pity.
To create new imaginaries, the Great Gent Gran group was trained in various aspects, such as theater and screenplay. In this way, we generated new discourses around the learning that comes with having overcome all ages of life and reaching this stage in many different ways. Because, as the sociologist Dolores Juliano would say, we age as we have lived, one does not become another person in old age.
This is how, in a participatory way, we premiered the short film Las Joyas de la Corona with relatives, neighbors and neighbors of the neighborhood, to generate again the criticism and debate, a cornerstone of our projects. We talked about the right to fall in love, and one woman said, “It seems like we couldn’t or didn’t have the right to fall in love.” “Our kids seem to be upset…” Issues such as the right to decide were put on the table and the topic also arose of the difference in treatment and expectations we have about older women and men, which are not the same.
It was a very emotional meeting because the audience, encouraged by the group La Gran Gent Gran, let themselves be touched by the story and new arguments were generated that we are already including in the new edition of the project.
While the new season arrives, visit the website of the Great Elderly
, where you can see how we made this project, behind the cameras of
our first production.