THIS weekend’s mini film festival, Films on Our Friend Death: An African Perspective, saw screenings
of three very different works; a comedy, a drama and a documentary.
At first glance, the two films screened on Friday and
Saturday could not be more different. No
Time to Die is a romantic comedy with a musical hearse and a coffin shaped
like an aeroplane taking central roles; Guelwaar
is a tense and political story of religious strife in Senegal. However, both
were pervaded by themes of death: its inevitablity, its practicalities, and its
centrality to life. They are dropping
like flies, the chief undertaker in No
Time to Die comments. It’s very good
for business.
These themes were put under the microscope on Sunday night
with two documentaries, Twenty Takes on Death
and Dying and Funeral Season,
followed by a panel discussion with representatives from the church, the
military and palliative care, many with experience of African countries.
Over the course of both documentary and discussion, the
contrast between African and European funeral practices and attitudes towards
death was evident; Matthew Lancit’s film uses Jewish funeral practices and
attitudes as a counterpoint to what he documents in Cameroon. In the ensuing
discussion, one question recurred: what can we learn from African attitudes to
death?
The contrast betweeen Twenty
Takes on Death and Dying and Funeral
Season was marked. Those interviewed in the former were often
uncomfortable; some showed signs of suppressed emotion, others viewed the
subject matter as distant and irrelevent. In the latter, funerals are discussed
as casually as the weather – the title comes from a conversation in which an
interviewee comments that they cannot have funerals in the rainy season.
Two differences between African and European attitudes
proved particularly notable. The first is that in Cameroon and many other parts
of African the time between death and funeral is generally far longer than the traditional
Christian five days, and it was generally agreed that this is far healthier.
One audience member, who grew up in Ghana, talked about how she’d defied
tradition by putting off a funeral for almost a month and caused much concern!
The second, and more subjective, difference is the different
emphasis placed on communal and individual grieving. In this sense, it was
concluded that African funeral practices are not necessarily any healthier or
‘better’ than European funerals because they are made into community events;
the personal dimension cannot be denied.
Overall, it was agreed that we in Scotland and the rest of
the United Kingdom could learn much from the longer mourning periods and
particularly from the greater acceptance of death seen in films such as these; Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, who
commisioned Twenty Takes on Death and
Dying, work to promote greater openness about death and dying.
As a final note, it’s important to take into account
cultural differences, not just between continents but between countries. It’s
too easy to talk about ‘Africa’ and ‘African funeral practices’ as a monolith;
as Guelwaar demonstrates, radically
different burial practices can co-exist within not only the same countries but
the same towns and villages; for all the talk of ‘African’ longer mourning periods,
in No Time to Die characters express
surprise at a family waiting seven weeks to hold a funeral due to delays; and Funeral Season makes it clear that many
of Cameroon’s funeral practices are unique and distinctive. Though there are
common threads, these three films show the diversity as well as (a degree of)
unity in African attitudes and practices.
(c) Katie MacFadyen is a fourth year student of Classics at the University of Edinburgh, about to start a dissertation in Reception Studies: the study of how classics is and has been used in subsequent cultural contexts. She also writes speculative fiction and theatre, as well as film and book reviews. Her theatre reviews from the Fringe Festival 2011 can be found on http://thenewkid.co.uk and http://somesuchlike.wordpress.com. She is a media intern for the Festival of Spirituality and Peace 2012 and contributes regularly to Spirituality and Peace News.
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