Community
DEATH IN ALL ITS FORMS
About
Throughout the world, death and the rituals that surround it are steeped in taboos. Death is celebrated, embraced and feared. Around death and the dead, cultures put in place diverse restrictions and practices associated with clothing, food and ritual. We all respond differently. In these two documentaries, death is examined through the eyes of a child and through experimental filmmaking.
About this Playlist
"I saw a film that said angels could bring parents back. But it's not true...", Marie-Clara, age 6 says in “The Fiancee of Life”. How do we talk with children who have lost a parent to illness, suicide or accidental death? Too often, we are silent, assuming that our silence will protect them. In this extraordinary film, children aged six to eleven years talk openly, honestly, and profoundly about how they felt when a parent or sibling died, the memories they cherish, their fears, their beliefs about an afterlife, and how they came to terms with the fact that their mom or dad is never coming back. This compassionate and insightful look into the minds and emotions of children shocks us out of complacency and forces us to examine our own feelings about death.
“Death in the Garden of Paradise” is an intensely personal meditation on the murder of the filmmaker's father and sister in Lahore by an unknown intruder. The disassociation caused by traumatic loss and the impossibility of knowing the identity of the killer flow seamlessly into the film's aesthetics so that familiar sights become strange, shopkeepers and passing pedestrians become suspects, and sound is fragmented and distorted. Architecture and haunted spaces, deserted gardens, photographs and paintings are both metaphors and physical locations in this elegant elegy to mortality.
In Jennifer Baichwal’s “The Holier It Gets”, we look at death in yet another light. When Baichwal's father passed away, he left an unusual request. Dr. Krishna Baichwal wanted his ashes to be buried at the source of the Ganges River. Jennifer and her three siblings hadn't been raised with any formal religion; growing up, they weren't taught Hindu practices. Their father married a Londoner, eventually moved to Canada and had seemingly rejected his culture. The Holier It Gets documents Dr. Baichwal's four children as they journey through India and up the Himalayas to fulfill his request. Accompanied by Nick de Pencier, Jennifer's partner and the film's cameraman, this film is an intimate portrait of a group of Asian Canadians whose encounters with India are funny, perplexing, upsetting and, ultimately, deeply revealing.
Additional Online Resources
Death and Grief
Teen Grief Support
Dealing with the Death of a Parent
Healthy Place
Selected Films (3)
- NFB
- NFB films have influenced the works of filmmakers around the world.
- Most Popular
- Check out what your fellow doc lovers are watching.
- Reel Asian
- Showcasing alumni filmmakers from past Reel Asian festivals.
- The Images Festival
- The Images Festival looks at the dynamics of accessibility.
- Doc Challenge
- A timed competition where filmmakers have 5 days to make a short doc.
- Brian Linehan
- Brian Linehan was best known for his celebrity interviews.
- CitySonic
- Toronto sounds good. It always has.
- TVO - Makes you think
- www.tvo.org
- RIDM
- www.ridm.qc.ca
- Industry Corner 2009
- Video and audio captures of all public series' and industry sessions at Hot Docs.
- Industry Corner 2010
- Festival Industry Sessions from 2010
- Industry Corner 2011
- Festival Industry Sessions From 2011
- Industry Corner 2012
- Festival Industry Sessions From 2012
- Industry Corner 2013
- Festival Industry Sessions From 2013
- Industry Corner 2014
- Hot Docs Industry Sessions Knowledge Capture
- Industry Resources
- Resources to be used in conjunction with video captured 2013 industry sessions.
- Educators
- Doc Library films with educational resources for high school.
- Inspirit Foundation
- Docs about pluralism and diversity of beliefs
- Filmmaker Interviews
- Interviews and Q&A's
- AIDS/HIV
- Aids/HIV Docs
- THE PLIGHT OF HOMELESSNESS
- Docs on Homelessness
- FOR MUSIC LOVERS
- Docs for Music Lovers
- Canadiana
- Films about Canada
- LOVE, THE MANY DOCUMENTED THING.
- Docs About Love
- DEALING WITH DISABILITY
- Docs on Dealing with Disabilities
- GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY
- Docs on Aging
- THE WONDER YEARS?
- Films about Growing Up
- CANADA’S OWN WONDER OF THE WORLD
- Niagara Falls
- DEATH IN ALL ITS FORMS
- Films About Dealing with Death