Past Season

Age Matters
(DOCUMENTARY, 26 minutes, 46 seconds)

Age Matters is a whimsical exploration of a topic many people in America’s youth-obsessed society avoid or cover up—how old they are.  Filmmaker Joe Murphy confronts his own feelings about age as he passes 50 and looks at how other people react to age at different stages in their lives.  A variety of people from ages five to 86 explain what it means to be young and old and how they respond to our culture’s age bias in this humorous documentary.

Filmmaker Profile: Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy has taught film and video production and criticism courses at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, since 1975. He started experimenting with 8mm film at Davidson College more than 35 years ago and has been independently producing documentaries for public television for over twenty years.  In 1989 and 1994, he was awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship by the NC Arts Council in recognition of the programs he has created.  His programs have been shown nationally and internationally on public television, including the broadcast of Auto Bond on the PBS series POV. They have also been shown at numerous festivals, including the Dallas Video Festival, the Atlanta Film and Video Festival and the Athens Video Festival.  His work was also included in the 1995 North Carolina Artist’s Exhibition sponsored every three years by the North Carolina Museum of Art. 

• Joe Murphy has taught film and video production and criticism courses at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, since 1975.
• Murphy started experimenting with 8mm film while at Davidson College over thirty-five years ago.