Death holds a paradoxical place for us: we understand our own death is inevitable, at the same time as it feels utterly inconceivable. Recently, death has felt closer than ever as millions of people have died of COVID-19 and the deadly effects of global warming accelerated in earnest. This collection of films explores dying in relation to ritual, spectacle, care, love and the traces we leave behind.

As included in this program, Thanadoula and Season of Goodbyes intimately grapple with the loss of a loved one, and engage on a journey of mourning and paying homage to the dearly departed. Digital Traces explores the circulation of death in digital spaces, informing contemporary practices of mourning, and expressing grief. Similarly, She’s Not Gonna Get More Dead consists of excerpts of Black women vampires appearing in commercial media, and highlights Black femininity being constrained within therealms of invisibility and hypervisibility. Three Metres and a Few Centimetres portrays the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ahvaz, Iran, as “dead-washers” volunteer at a cemetery to cleanse and prepare the corpses of deceased persons for burial in accordance to Islamic customs and ritual. You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a fictional portrait that tenderly balances loss, grief and humour, and embraces the definite truths of life (such as death) as what makes a life worth living.

DIGITAL TRACES (April Lin | 2019 | United Kingdom | English with English subtitles | 18 min)

SHE’S NOT GONNA GET MORE DEAD (Ariella Tai | 2018 | Canada | English | 6 min)

THANADOULA (Robin McKenna | 2020 | Canada | English | 6 min)

THREE METRES AND A FEW CENTIMETRES (Mostafa Salehi Nezhad | 2020 | Iran |
Persian with English Subtitles | 18 min)

SEASON OF GOODBYES (Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann | 2018 | Kenya | English | 14 min)

YOU WERE AN AMAZEMENT ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN
(Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby | 2019 | USA | English | 33 min)

Keywords: BIPOC Experience | Death | Existentialism | Grief | Healing

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:
WHAT EVERYONE GETS

Please join the filmmakers for a conversation where the prompt is death and all the grief
that comes with less life; moderated by Lee Henderson, a Toronto-based artist and educator who’s practice investigates association networks of human intellectual-emotional investment, more commonly known as “meaning”.