Dementia on Screen
Global Perspectives
Will be published approx. on 12. November 2026
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-350-55322-4 (ISBN)
Description
This is a book about the stories that films tell about dementia and the varied ways it's depicted in films from around the world. Dementia is a progressive disease linked to ageing which ranks among the leading causes of death worldwide, for which the cause remains unknown and there is no cure. Drawing on its incidence in his own family, Michael Chanan explores how films represent the condition: what they show, how they show it, and what they don't show and steer away from. Set within medical, social, cultural, economic and political contexts, the book surveys both the modes of documentary and the varieties of fiction, from tragedy and melodrama to black comedy and the thriller. It also traces the contrast between the medicalisation of dementia dominating films from the Global North and those from the Global South, where medicalisation and social care are underdeveloped, and the sufferer is perceived less as an atomised individual than as inextricably interwoven with the social order.
Reviews / Votes
Michael Chanan offers a comprehensive and insightful survey of cinematic depictions of dementia. The work is global in scope, marrying theory with history, while also touchingly treating dementia as a phenomenon that has personally affected the author. A landmark text. * William Brown, Associate Professor of Film, University of British Columbia, Canada * Dementia presents large challenges of representation: first, every person with dementia is a unique individual. Secondly, cinema risks focusing on symptomatic and observable behaviours rather than on lived experience. Michael Chanan's book shows us how, and how far, the vast range of films he has watched have managed to understand and engage with these problems. His analysis is as eloquent as it is thorough. Highly recommended. * Lesley Saunders, Poet and Author * Dementia on Screen is that rare work of film scholarship which dares to think with feeling. Chanan's unflinching account of his brother's Alzheimer's anchors a truly global survey - from Haneke to Iran, from Chilean memory politics to Yakutian neorealism - while mounting a quietly devastating critique of the biomedical model and the political failures it conceals. Essential reading for anyone interested in cinema, care, or what it means to remain human in the face of disappearance. * Agnieszka Piotrowska, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, award-winning filmmaker, and author of The Cinema of Agnieszka Holland: Anger and Ethics (2026) *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
9 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-350-55322-4 (9781350553224)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael Chanan is Emeritus Professor (Film and Video) at the University of Roehampton, UK. A seasoned documentary filmmaker since the early 1970s, he is also a writer and teacher, and the author of books on
topics in film history, including early cinema, Cuban cinema, and the politics of documentary, as
well as the social history of music and the history of recording, of which the most recent is From Printing
to Streaming: Cultural Production Under Capitalism (2022).
topics in film history, including early cinema, Cuban cinema, and the politics of documentary, as
well as the social history of music and the history of recording, of which the most recent is From Printing
to Streaming: Cultural Production Under Capitalism (2022).
Content
Foreword & Acknowledgements
1. Out of Sight
2. Documentary: Dementia observed
3. Fiction: Dementia imagined I
4. Fiction: Dementia imagined II
5. Fiction: Dementia imagined III
6. Fiction: Dementia imagined IV
7. Out of Mind
Notes
Index
1. Out of Sight
2. Documentary: Dementia observed
3. Fiction: Dementia imagined I
4. Fiction: Dementia imagined II
5. Fiction: Dementia imagined III
6. Fiction: Dementia imagined IV
7. Out of Mind
Notes
Index