The Dementia Film Project aims to promote understanding of the experience of living with dementia through film. The focus of the film is on changes in self-awareness in dementia – how we think about ourselves and relate to others. By combining people’s first-hand experiences of living with dementia with technical insights from researchers, we will create a dramatised film script which tells the real story behind the condition.

We want the film to help increase the audience’s understanding of dementia and its impact, so that those experiencing it now and in the future can feel better understood and heard on a personal and societal level.

The project lead, Dr Steve Fleming said:

“Our long-term goal is to create a film that is engaging, moving and gives insight into ‘what it is like’ to live with dementia, informed both by our ongoing research, and by the lived experience of patients and their families.”

About the Research

Self awareness is the ground beneath our feet upon which all that we are is built, and rests. So what does it mean when we start to feel it slipping away from underneath us? When we are forced to examine what lies beneath the layers of identity community and family we have inherited, collected and arranged over the years of our lives, how do we react? Where do we look? Where do we go?

Often, the traditional clinical view of dementia is that it involves changes in cognition and memory. However, in our research we are increasingly realising that changes in self-awareness are also important. Our film will focus on these broader, human aspects of dementia, to ask how it affects our awareness of ourselves and our relationships with others.

The project is funded by the UCL Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund.