The Future of Aging

Heather Stephenson, now.tufts.edu

Herbes-Sommers image from article

A new documentary by Christine Herbes-Sommers, F71, takes on the challenges America faces as more people live longer

Herbes-Sommers image from article, with caption: The global transition to an older population “will require innovation and change in virtually every social institution in any society that wants to continue to be productive and humane,” said Christine Herbes-Sommers.

Excerpt:

So what does it mean for a society to have so many people living so much longer?

That’s the question behind Coming of Age in Aging America, the latest documentary by Christine Herbes-Sommers, F71, an independent film producer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The one-hour film will air on PBS stations in late March. ...

Herbes-Sommers has been interested in using film to kick-start policy since she was a student at Fletcher. She earned a scholarship to Tufts by writing an essay about how mass media was changing public diplomacy.

But funding is harder to come by these days, she said, and her style of documentary—an “old-fashioned” format with expert talking heads and narration—is not as popular as it once was.

“My kinds of films are dinosaurs,” she said. “They’re big, expensive, complicated, challenging.” ...