‘Time Is The Longest Distance’: A Gay Son’s Journey To Reconnect With Alzheimer’s-Stricken Dad

Grad student Bryan Powers (photo) is making a film that explores the relationship between a gay son and his father who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

 

Being a slightly older grad student gives me more life experience upon which to draw in my storytelling and filmmaking. When deciding on the subject for my thesis film, I chose the two topics that have had the most lasting impact on my life – gay rights and acceptance, and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Today we celebrate recent progress in gay rights, and hope it will make it easier for younger people to come out to their families. For those like me, though, who came out at a time when society was less accepting, a distance may remain between gay people and their parents. While our parents might have accepted our sexuality, they were never comfortable talking about it, and we pulled away.  

This is the back-story to my film, Time is the Longest Distance, (project preview above), in which Adam visits his Alzheimer’s-stricken father with news about a major change in his life. Adam must reconnect with his father before time runs out, and Alzheimer’s robs his father of the awareness he will need for Adam’s revelation to register. 

My own father suffered from Alzheimer’s before passing away four years ago. Today, an estimated 5.3 million Americans of all ages have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and that number is growing. Often, dealing with the cognitive degeneration of Alzheimer’s can be as hard on the family and caregivers as it is on the patient. 

Despite the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s, very few films are being made about this traumatic disease. I hope that my film will help raise awareness about Alzheimer’s, the need to accept homosexuality, and the importance of family love for all of us – no matter whether gay or straight.

Please join our team and help get the film made! Please visit our IndieGoGo site to contribute and to see some of the great perks and rewards you can get, and please visit and like us on Facebook!

 

Editor’s note: Full disclosure – Bryan Powers and I worked together about a decade ago. We would have shared this story regardless because it deals with an important and insufficiently-covered topic.

Image: Screenshot via Bryan Powers/Vimeo