Filmmaker Carolyn Jones spent four years interviewing and photographing nurses for the groundbreaking American Nurse book and film, and another year of research and interviews focused on what Dying in America looks like, all of which has led her to making this new film, the culmination of a journey, called DEFINING HOPE.

DEFINING HOPE is a story about people weighing what matters most at the most fragile junctures in life, and the nurses who guide them. It’s a documentary that follows patients with life-threatening illness as they make choices about how they want to live, how much medical technology they can accept, what they hope for and how that hope evolves when life is threatened. It is optimistic and reminds us that we have choices in how we die.

This movie is critical and relevant right now, with our rapidly aging population and incalculable challenges in healthcare and end-of-life care. We aren’t dying the way we used to. We have ventilators, dialysis machines, ICUs—technologies that can “fix” us and keep our bodies alive—which have radically changed how we make medical decisions. In our death-denying culture, no matter how sick we get, there is always “hope.” The will to live is a powerful force, and eventually we will all have to make individual decisions when faced with very complex choices.

The film was released in November 2017, in honor of National Hospice and Palliative Care Month. It went on to screen over 150 times in both theatrical and community settings and in the Spring of 2018 it aired on 977 PBS stations nationwide.

Our film is a non-profit project, generously supported by the Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare, the American Nurses Foundation, and the generosity of individuals that believe in our mission.

It is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts

DEFINING HOPE (1X60) feD from APT on March 30, 2018.