alr

Dying

Director in Person
Screening on Film
$15 Special Event Tickets
Directed by Michael Roemer.
US, 1976, 16mm, color, 92 min.
Print source: Library of Congress

While continuing to teach at Yale and write scripts, Roemer was asked by WGBH if he would be interested in making a film about the rites and customs of death. Roemer was interested in exploring the topic, but only from the point of view of those in the process of dying. Three and a half months of interviews with forty people lead to a two-year project and would eventually leave Roemer physically and emotionally depleted. But as a result, Dying is unlike any other film in its attempt to address the still most taboo of all subjects, saying on camera what few would under any circumstances. 

The reaction was swift and brutal from some, who sputtered in asking why he had made the film, though others recognize it rightfully as a crucial and unique contribution not to only the discussion of death, but of open discussion at all. It is not easy to see Harriet, the soon to be young widow, admit that she is terrified of being alone with two teenage sons, and if her husband Bill is going to die, “Why can’t it just be quick,” so she could still have a chance to re-marry? Roemer remembers being told at a screening that such an admission would ostracize Harriet from her community. This turned out not to be the case, the community far more understanding of Harriet’s honesty than predicted. Painful truth, people’s unpredictability and emotional brutality reoccur in Roemer’s films, narrative or non-narrative. As he says, “I don’t make decisions, I let facts decide for me, just like my fiction films.” – excerpted from introduction by Jake Perlin

Dying introduction and post-screening discussion with filmmaker Michael Roemer, writer/programmer Jake Perlin and HFA Director Haden Guest. ©Harvard Film Archive

Part of film series

Read more

Michael Roemer and The Rite of Rediscovery

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema

Read more

Songs of Love and Loss. Elvira Notari’s Cinematic Realism