“A humorous and heartwarming documentary feature, Cyber-Seniors chronicles the extraordinary journey of a group of senior citizens as they discover the world of the internet through the guidance of teenage mentors.”                                                                                                      Business Insider

Directed by Saffron Cassady, the idea for the Cyber-Seniors documentary began with a high school project that was launched by two sisters. The sisters had the support of their mom, Brenda Rusnak, who had worked her entire career with seniors. After a successful first year, Brenda helped continue the Cyber-Seniors program, expanding it to a second retirement home and helping to engage more youth mentors. Over the next ten months, Saffron and her film crew captured over 120 hours of footage and many memorable moments.  Of this film, the Washington Post reports:

Kerstin Wolgers made it through almost 82 years on this Earth without ever once checking an e-mail, watching a YouTube clip or sending a tweet. But last week, as part of a crash course that introduced her to the Internet for the first time, the former Swedish actress did all three — plus Googled, Instagrammed, Wikipedia-ed, shopped, video-gamed … even online-dated, eventually. “Lots going on here,” she says of Tinder. “It’s really exciting, if you asked me.”

Understanding how significant this program is to the lives of seniors was captured for me (Cathy) in a single moment when I watched one senior weep while he viewed his grandson play the piano via Skype. The differences technology makes in their lives, is remarkable.

Under the Getting Started heading of the web page for this documentary (link below) you can learn how to begin such a project in your community.  It also will let you know when the documentary is coming to a theatre near you.  Personally, I (Cathy) can’t wait to see it.

http://cyberseniorsdocumentary.com/

A delightful trailer for this film can be viewed at:

www.cyberseniorsdocumentary.com.