Documentaries

• Ariès, Philippe. [1977] 1981. The Hour of Our Death. Trans. Helen Weaver. New York: Vintage.

  • Excerpt: "Changes in man's attitude toward death either take place very slowly or else occur between long periods of immobility. Contemporaries do not notice these changes because these periods of immobility span several generations and thus exceed the capacity of the collective memory. If the modern observer wishes to arrive at an understanding that eluded contemporaries, he must widen his field of vision. … The historian of death must not be afraid to embrace the centuries until they run into a millennium. … [My] approach … is intuitive and selective … The observer scans a chaotic mass of documents and tries to decipher, beyond the intentions of the writers or artists, the unconscious expression of the sensibility of the age."

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• Melville, Greg. 2022. Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries. New York: Abrams.

  • Excerpt: "Opened in 1831 as a leafy escape from the bustle of the city for both the living and dead, Mount Auburn was the country’s first 'garden', or 'rural', cemetery - sparking a rapid spread of imitators across the young country. Mount Auburn was the birthplace of landscape architecture in the United States, and the country’s first public park, laying the first building block for the modern environmental movement. But just as notably, it untethered graveyards from houses of worship and turned them into freestanding entities, which transformed America’s burial process and customs. Nearly every modern cemetery in the country shares the DNA of Mount Auburn."

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• Roach, Mary. 2003. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton.

  • Excerpt: "I guess I feel the same way about being a corpse. Why lie around on your back when you can do something interesting and new, something useful? For every surgical procedure developed, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside the surgeons, making history in their own quiet, sundered way. For two thousand years, cadavers - some willingly, some unwittingly - have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings … to help test France's first guillotine … helping make the case for mandatory seat belts … ridden the Space Shuttle (okay, pieces of them) … helped a graduate student in Tennessee debunk spontaneous human combustion … been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin."

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• Smith, Doug. 2007. Big Death: Funeral Planning in the Age of Corporate Deathcare. Black Point, NS: Fernwood. 

  • Excerpt: "Federation of Ontario Memorial Societies president Pearl Davie remains troubled by the fact that most bereavement counsellors are affiliated with funeral homes. She says they all have the same idea of what a grieving person should and should not do. In particular, she says, they stress the importance of seeing the embalmed body and having an open-casket funeral. 'My idea would be for everyone to visit me while I am alive, bring me flowers and then, when I am dead, remember what a character I was and have a party. I do not need a place for people to come and talk to me. I am not there.'"​

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