Catalog Search Results
1) Big Mama
Language
English
Description
This Academy Award-winning documentary profiles a devoted grandmother's struggle to raise her grandson under the watchful eye of a complex and unsympathetic social welfare system. The film follows Viola Dee for 18 months as the 90-year-old cares for 9-year-old Walter in South Central Los Angeles. While contending with her own declining health and Walter's behavioral and psychiatric problems, Dee fights-with limited success-to keep Walter out of foster...
Language
English
Description
The breakup of a relationship can lead to feelings of shame, guilt, and failure. After 22 years of marriage, Jean found herself alone, contemplating suicide. She speaks of the process of grief, of accepting her loneliness, and of her new life and how she healed her wounds.
Language
English
Description
What can this old guy tell me that's going to help me when I get to a similar point?' Ted Koppel put that question to Morrie Schwartz during an interview conducted before the popular Brandeis sociology professor died of ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Morrie's illness gradually destroyed nerve cells in his body, leading him on a slow physical decline throughout which his mind remained sound, lucid, and even playful. This ABC News report...
Language
English
Description
Terry lost his family once through divorce. But when his ex-wife suddenly died, he lost them again. Because of the distance from his children, he was excluded from their grieving process and family support. This program highlights the necessity of family support and the depression that can result from isolation.
Language
English
Description
The loss of a child is always difficult to accept, but when your child commits suicide, the grief can become compounded by guilt. Meet Deanna, whose son Tim committed suicide at the age of 22. Eleven years later, she still grieves over his death and wonders what she could have done to prevent it.
7) Facing Death
Language
English
Description
In this episode, Gordon Lang confronts his own mortality when he is diagnosed with cancer. Gordon discusses his emotions, hopes, and fears, as he contemplates his own life's journey and its imminent conclusion.
Language
English
Description
At the Sacred Heart Palliative Care Centre in Sydney, Australia, a small group of health care professionals are devoting their careers to death. Sacred Heart's patients have all been diagnosed with a terminal illness-but instead of pursuing elusive cures and treatments, they have embraced the finality of their lives with guidance that contradicts much of conventional medicine. In this film, four of those patients have made another courageous decision....
11) A Breath of Hope
Language
English
Description
When a loved one has a serious illness the emotional fallout can be harder for the family to bear than for the actual patient. This poignant documentary follows 27-year-old Rachel as she and her husband Brian cope with her diagnosis of lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare and sometimes fatal respiratory disease. After Rachel's condition unexpectedly worsens their search for a lung donor becomes all the more urgent, and Brian's devoted, anguished...
12) The Last Journey
Language
English
Description
If we're lucky, our parents live long enough to entrust us with protecting and caring for them. But the adult caregiver doesn't always feel so lucky-the burdens of decision making, of remaining involved and vigilant, are often overwhelming. What happens if this hardship becomes unmanageable? How can we best look after and safeguard our aging loved ones without losing a grip on our own lives in the process? This film brings those challenges into the...