"We pray to our ancestors but we do not worship them. You, you need an intermediary, the priest. But for us, our intermediary is the ancestor who is sitting next to God," says Poundé, the old Cameroonian ethnologist, to the young Jewish director from Canada. And with this conclusive statement, everything becomes clear: the funerals in memory of "the dead who are not dead" organized several days or even years following the burial, the chants, brass...

The Balinese cremation ceremony, or ngaben, has primarily been known in the West as either a major tourist attraction that dazzles visitors with the splendor, intricacy, and drama of its performance, or as fodder for long-standing anthropological arguments about personhood and emotion on the island that debated whether or not Balinese people expressed, or even experienced, grief. According to Balinese Hindu beliefs, cremation is one of the most important...

The Language You Cry In tells an amazing scholarly detective story that searches for -and finds- meaningful links between African Americans and their ancestral past. It bridges hundreds of years and thousands of miles from the Gullah people of present-day Georgia back to 18th century Sierra Leone. It recounts the even more remarkable saga of how African Americans have retained links with their African past through the horrors of the middle passage,...

Daniel is a decent young man who is married to Jane. They live at his father's home. When his father dies, it his up to him to organize his funeral. On the morning of the funeral, with a suitably grave expression on his face, Daniel is ready to welcome his father's friends and relatives. But preserving the dignity inherent in such a circumstance will be a hard task. Particularly with an undertaker who botches his work; his famous, but selfish brother...

Tyler Perry does quadruple duty, playing three characters plus the popular Aunt Madea. Madea is summoned to rural Georgia for a family get-together that turns tragic with an unexpected death. Now it's up to Madea to plan the funeral, hold the family together, and make sure no dirty family secrets get leaked. Of course, in Madea's world nothing ever goes exactly to plan, but she's determined to see it through!