Film: Seven Songs For a Long Life

This passionate and touching film from the Scottish Documentary Institute, takes us behind the scenes at Strathcarron Hospice, following the lives of six patients, and staff who use singing as therapy and encourage each person to find their own unique voice. There is a great score by composer Mark Orton. Nurse Mandy Malcomson is a model caregiver.

From the moment Tosh refuses to fill in his assessment form and serenades us with a remarkably good Sinatra tune, you realise that this is not going to be a sentimental or clinical film. Each patient deals with enormous changes during the three years of filming. There are wonderful musical moments, and director Amy Hardie has a good eye for the evocative, quiet times too. We see the terminally-ill mother trying to live life as normally as possible, at home with her children, frying sausage, watching TV and going rollerskating. Another patient speaks about his motorbike rallying.

There are the worries of trying to make a will, getting the right pain control, finding a guardian for a child and moving house, and through the film we see the growing relationships between staff and patients.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to help face your own mortality, making the process of dying itself safe, individual, and as gentle as possible.

See it if you can. This film deserves an award. Seven Songs For a Long Life is now showing in various cinemas, community screenings and hospices around the country.

For more information on screenings see: www.sevensongsfilm.com/screenings

General information: www.sevensongsfilm.com/

The film is also available for a few more days on iplayer: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06hhxnj/seven-songs-for-a-long-life
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