When 101-year-old Rose, a subject in a documentary about an active retirement community in the United Kingdom, has a stroke, another of the film's subjects, 102-year-old Hetty, is taken aback by the immobile state her friend is left in.

Silver Spring resident Terrie Elliott knows the feeling. After her mother battled back from multiple strokes, she could not recover from a final one that left her unable to speak at age 98.

"What really got to her was the lack of communication," Elliott, a resident at the Riderwood retirement community, said Wednesday after a screening of the film "The Time of Their Lives" at the SilverDocs Documentary Festival in Silver Spring. "After that last stroke everyone allowed her to go."

Her mother's death made Elliott, 80, think of her own mortality, a subject that takes the forefront in the film.

"Unless I could communicate, I don't want to live anymore," Hetty says in the film after she learns that Rose passed away two weeks after the stroke. "I don't want just to be somebody breathing in a bed. There's no dignity in that."

The Mary Feilding Guild, the small cottage-style London retirement home for "active elderly" featured in the film, is a far cry from the 120-acre campus of Riderwood in Silver Spring, which houses 2,700 residents. The film's subjects – Rose, 101, Hetty, 102, and Alison, 87 – are older than Elliott and 64-year-old Sandy Waibel, a Riderwood resident who accompanied Elliott on June 17 to the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre.

The film follows the three women for 15 months as they deal with bodies that increasingly fail them but spirits and minds that remain sharp.

It's that lifestyle that leads Elliott and Waibel to Riderwood.

"What I've encountered a lot at Riderwood is people with different backgrounds and passions already there, no matter what their ailments or age," said Waibel, a former corporate executive who has studied ministry for the past 17 years.

While Waibel works full-time at Colesville United Methodist Church, Elliott, a former University of Maryland professor, is taking classes at a community college, in addition to her Pilates, yoga and Wii video bowling classes.

At 102, Hetty is a well-known – and still active – political activist. Before her death, Rose, a former journalist, continued to write a weekly column in a local newspaper that she dictated to a friend because she is legally blind.

The women at Riderwood and in the film are capable of living on their own, but they come to the community relatively healthy, to ensure their final years are redeeming ones.

"We joke, ‘I came here to die,' but it's not negative, it's a fact of life," Waibel said.

"This is the best thing you can do for your children, the earlier the better," Elliott responded.

"It puts you in control of your life," Waibel said.

Toward the end of the film, Hetty, who repeats throughout the film that she is "ready to die," is in a car on her way back from the doctor's office. She announces the encouraging results of her blood and heart tests almost begrudgingly, with a look of disappointment on her face.

The next scene shows footage of her marching in one of her frequent peace rallies, striding in step with protesters a quarter of her age.

"Living is an existence at the moment," Hetty says in the film's final scene. "But if you asked me, if I derive any pleasure out of life … I would probably say yes, while I still have the mental capacity to advocate for peace."

Despite being considerably younger than Hetty, the Riderwood women say they relate to that unique stage of life: set on making the final years of their lives as fulfilling as possible, but not fearing death.

"They are going to a better life," Elliott said of her friends who died recently. "… I talk about it with my friends and we say, ‘We've done it all.'

"If it comes suddenly or whenever, it's been a good ride."

-Learn more about three films screened recently at the SilverDocs Documentary Film Festival.

-View of the trailer for "Facing Ali" at www.facingalimovie.com

-View of the trailer for "The Time of Their Lives" at http://vimeo.com/3183839

-Read the blog for "No Impact Man" at www.noimpactman.typepad.

com/blog/