Leave Your Old Ideas About Aging at the Door

Mildred Nichols, founding member of the Rhode Island Women’s Political Caucus: “I’m an elderly woman, I guess, though I don’t feel elderly.”

Linda Miller, the woman behind what is now the Providence non-profit Inspiring Minds: “When people call me ‘hon’ and ‘sweetie’, I just explain, “I am not your ‘hon’.  And ageism…we live in an ageist society. But I’m still working, I’m still dancing…When I’m dead, I’ll be dead. I’m not dying before I die.”

On October 15, a 55-minute documentary by local filmmaker and URI professor Michelle Le Brun will premiere at the Providence Public Library on Empire Street. (All of the 250 seats at PPL have already been claimed and there’s a long waitlist, but don’t worry, there will be other showings.)

The film, Optics of Aging, profiles five entertaining, inspiring, lively people — all residents of Providence. It celebrates their lives and achievements, and high spirits. When the documentary opens, two of them – Linda Miller and Aly Stallman – are laughing, telling a story about their early days getting to know each other. The audience chuckles along with them, while probably also thinking, “Jeez, I wish I were half as cool and witty as they are.”

What makes that reaction especially, wonderfully worth noting is that Linda and Aly were both 90 years old at the time of filming. (They had just moved in together and gotten married soon after.) In fact, the combined age of all five Rhode Islanders in the documentary when filming began in 2019 was well over 400 years old. Or, as the filmmaker, Michelle, would phrase it after having gotten to know them well: over 400 years young.

Optics of Aging, which received funding from The Rhode Island Foundation, The Robertson Foundation and RI State Council on the Arts, angel donors and GoFundMe donors, conveys a heartening, eye-opening message for viewers no matter where on this earth they reside: Reconsider the stereotypes you harbor about aging and older people; you can be 90 and still be a blissfully active participant in this world.

But for Rhode Islanders – especially Providence residents – the film will resonate on a second level, because they’ll “meet” five people who stepped up at times when they saw problems to be solved.  They are not the most famous Rhode Islanders – Michelle wanted to profile people who had flown somewhat under the radar – but their contributions to the city and state are clear.

The five elders you meet in the film are:

Linda Miller (90 years young when interviewed in 2019), the founder of Lippitt Hill Tutorial, which later became Inspiring Minds, whose mission was to provide academic help to all students

Morris Nathanson (92 when interviewed in 2019, and 95 years young when he died in 2022), a designer of restaurants, of DePasquale Square on Federal Hill, and a co-designer of Trinity Repertory Theater

Mildred Nichols (90 years young when interviewed in 2019), a founding member of the RI Women’s Political Caucus and community leader

Aly Stallman (90 years young when interviewed in 2019, and when he died later that year), an entrepreneur, and an ironman triathlete who founded Ocean State Marathon

Phil West (77 years young when interviewed in 2019), once the RI State Director of Common Cause and called, “the Godfather of Political Reform in Rhode Island” by the Providence Journal.

Michelle herself used to be afraid of aging; She was 61 and her mother had always told her, ‘Oh, aging sucks.’ “I was scared,” Michelle said. “I thought, ‘My money won’t last, I won’t last.” But that feeling of dread was soon replaced by curiosity. How, she started to wonder, are folks older than me dealing with aging? Searching for answers to questions about a subject is how she believes many documentarians get obsessed with an idea for a film.  And the more she learned about older Rhode Islanders she considered profiling in her film, the more she realized that her earlier assumptions about aging and “old age” were completely incorrect.

By the time she began filming, she says, “I wanted to uncover stereotypes about aging. Dissolve them.” The film, she hopes, will spur viewers to begin to reflect upon how ageism may be the last ‘ism’ our society needs to address. She hopes the film will also open up possibilities for people about ways growing older could play out for them, their parents, and their neighbors. So that even if the viewer was in their 20s, the next time they sat down next to someone with white hair and a million wrinkles, they would not automatically talk loudly to them (if they used to) or assume that that person’s memory stunk compared to their own.

Documentary filmmaker Michelle Le Brun

In fact, Michelle likes to refer to the five people in her film as ‘elders,’ because, she says, the word ‘elder’ connotes “dignity, history, authority and wisdom.” She hopes the film spurs older viewers “to value themselves, and their long history of decision-making, of raising a family. They have knowledge and wisdom to share, and the world needs it. Our youth, in particular, need it. We live in a consumerist, demanding society that values the new, shiny thing. What is lost is the soft sciences – that which creates who we are in the world.”

After watching the film, people may also be inspired to get involved in their community, no matter their age, the way the five elders did through the years. “On some level this film is about place,” says Michelle. “Where we live shapes us, and we shape it.”

Optics of Aging is not Michelle’s first film. In 1999, her hour-long documentary Death: A Love Story, about her late husband Mel Howard, debuted and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. After his death, she had decided to make the film with the many hours of video that the two of them had shot after he got his cancer diagnosis. The documentary chronicled his unique attitude and choices when confronted by the disease that ultimately took his life.

Since moving to Providence in 2005, her production company, Harken Productions, has made memorable short documentaries about locals. Gone Fishin’ is about the Ocean State Bait and Tackle shop in Providence, and the diverse community that blooms there around fishing.  In 2008, she made Ruth Dealy: A Portrait, about the Providence-based painter, Ruth Dealy, who had nearly become blind in childhood due to illness but did not let that deter her from painting.  Just as the elders in Optics of Aging weren’t dissuaded from living full lives by conventional so-called “limits” of aging, it didn’t occur to Ruth that a nearly- blind person might not become a painter.

That film was made in conjunction with HARKEN! Youth Media, which Michelle had founded in Los Angeles, in order to teach filmmaking to incarcerated youth and to make short films driven by the realities of living surrounded by violence.  Telling Ruth Dealy’s story was part of the NETWORKS project spearheaded by the late Dr. Joseph Chazan and Umberto Crenca, artist, founder and director of Providence’s non-profit arts organization AS220.  Until 2014, HARKEN! Youth Media brought underserved and gang-affiliated youth of Providence behind the camera, immersing them in the art of storytelling.

Harken Productions’ mission is to “produce compelling films that challenge our assumptions about life and awaken our passion for truth.” Its symbol is a conch shell. “For me, documentary filmmaking is about listening,” says Michelle. “And when you listen to a conch shell, you can hear infinity.”  And now, Optics of Aging is about hearing our future selves.

Click to watch Michelle Le Brun’s films, including a trailer for Optics of Aging. And here to get updates about future showings of Optics of Aging, and to access an ever-growing list of resources for older people in Providence and greater Rhode Island.

Editor’s Note: Optics of Aging is now available to rent on: https://kinema.com/ (updated 10/25)

Ellen Welty is an ardent fan of Providence, where she has lived since 2000. She’s sure the city is her forever home, even though she has never drunk from the fountain outside the Athenaeum. Speaking of which, she loves to sit in the stacks in the Athenaeum and read obscure memoirs by female travelers from long ago. Originally a magazine editor and writer in New York City, she has been a freelancer for years now, covering an eclectic mix of subjects.