With the rise of the alternative death and dying industry comes alternative methods of memorialization. Join the co-creator, Sarah Friedland, of the forthcoming Here After documentary for a discussion about the shifting ideas around our remains.

About The Good Death Roundtable series:

The Good Death Roundtable is a forum that seeks to foster a better relationship with our mortality. This fall’s sessions will focus on themes of rituals and ceremonies surrounding end-of-life, death, and memorialization. By exploring the rituals involved in death and dying, we can begin to understand the current cultural attitudes toward death as well as imagine what we want in our future death beds. In addition to bringing death out of the taboo, this roundtable series asks us to imagine our own deaths in terms of preparedness and understanding.

Director/producer/cinematographer/sound recordist Sarah Friedland’s works with Esy Casey have screened widely in the US and abroad and have been supported by grants including The Jerome Foundation, The Paul Newman Foundation, and The William H. Prusoff Foundation.  In 2009, after the debut of her feature documentary Thing With No Name, she was named one of the Top 10 Independent Filmmakers to Watch by The Independent Magazine. She is a recipient of the 2014 Paul Robeson Award from The Newark Museum for her feature documentary The Rink, which aired on PBS (WNET/NJTV) in May 2017. Her recent documentary Jeepney (Produced with Esy Casey) was broadcast on PBS in 2015. She has received residencies and fellowships from The Center of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, the LABA House of Study, the MacDowell Colony, and Meerkat Media. Friedland is currently the Director of the MDOCS Documentary Storyteller’s Institute at Skidmore College.

Bethany Tabor is a classically trained ballet dancer-turned-writer and researcher who is persistently exploring themes of death and dying in the realm of performance art. She recently earned her Master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University where she examined the politics of decomposition as it relates to reenactment and reperformance. She is currently the Technology Programs Manager at Pioneer Works.