The Alzheimer's Choir

The Alzheimer's Choir, a beautifully made documentary, screened on BBC2 at the end of last year, starts at a meeting of  "Singing for the Brain", a group of singers in Bristol made up of Alzheimer's sufferers and their spouses.


The blurb for the program explains, "As the group bursts into song, an extraordinary thing happens. People who may not even recognise their own partner find the words of a song learnt half a century earlier, and suddenly - just for length of time it takes to sing a few verses - it is impossible to tell who is the Alzheimer's patient and who is the carer."


The phenomenon of music opening the memories of Alzheimer's patients is fascinating and much discussed elsewhere, but the film doesn't really concentrate much on this.  It's more about individuals' experiences of Alzheimer's, either the sufferer's or the carer-partner's. These moving accounts are told direct to the camera in a series of set-piece interviews in the homes of some of the people gleaned from the Alzheimer's choir.  Its a gentle film. We don't see directly the dark face of the disease but you get a sense of its vicious cruelty lingering in its aftermath.


Watch it here if you can on the iPlayer before it is removed on 21 January 2010