All the talk coming out of Sundance is usually about films that will soon find their way into theaters, but there are other things that show there, including shorts. I was invited to screen Death Education, directed by Yuxuan Ethan Wu. It may not find its way into the daily reports from the festival, but it’s an interesting and even moving brief experience.
The film opens with scenes from a cemetery, followed by a morgue, a crematorium, and the processing of ashes into a cloth bag on which is written, “unnamed male”. Then, we see a room with many such bags.
Death is often a taboo subject. It is especially so in China. A Chinese high school teacher, Qian Jiambo, has a class each year that has death as its topic. Part of the class is to bury some of those bags of anonymous ashes (some of children) on the Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day.
The film is not about action or talking. It is more reflective and introspective. Each of the students takes a bag of ashes, places them in a common grave, drops in flower petals, and stand around the grave respectfully. From time to time, there is some voice over taken from the students’ diaries following the experience. These are comments that show a depth of consideration about death and the experiences they have had.
Death is often avoided in our society as well. We also have the ashes of unknowns that are kept until an annual mass burial service. Every so often, a newspaper article will report on such a service, and we may wonder who all those people were and consider the loneliness of such deaths.
Mortality is part of what gives meaning to life. This short film gives us, like the Chinese students, a chance to reflect on the meaning of both death and life.
