- [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by the City of Austin Office of Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment.

Tommy and Alexandra Maher, Sandra Honaker, John Wright, Janet Walsh, Midori Munguia, Grace Horvath, Jasmine Mobasseri, Brenda Isaacs-Booth, Matt Walsh.

Additional funding was provided by.

(soft upbeat music) And by.

(soft upbeat music) (traffic whooshing) - Well, figured it's summer.

Got a beautiful day here in upstate New York.

What better way to spend it than going to watch some movies about death, you know?

Little end of life talk.

That's what I want to be doing.

I keep it real light with what I watch at home.

Turn on Netflix.

I'm keeping it light and airy.

I'm going comedy, default.

Anything in the trailer that shows like suffering of a loss, navigating some grief.

I'm usually passing it right by.

And this is a festival that is all about that.

So yeah, already kicking it off real uncomfortable.

- [Meghan] Aunt Dawn's passing led to me directing my first short film about a woman grieving the loss of her mother.

Aunt MaryKay's passing inspired our first feature documentary with Justin directing this time.

So it was inevitable that a death-themed film festival became the setting for our first shoot for "How We Grieve."

- [Justin] A series hosted by two filmmaker siblings processing our grief and fear of death by learning how others handle life after loss.

- Film is integral in helping death literacy.

- How do you speak to kids about death at a developmentally appropriate stage?

- A death doula comes in and one of the best things that we can do is just normalize death.

- Yeah, I've been feeling really dead on the inside lately.

- Well, I guess this is where we hug it out.

So.

- I don't want to.

- Five, six, seven, eight.

- Seven, eight.

And that, okay.

- There we go.

- Yeah.

- And scene.

(old timey upbeat music) - [Mario] Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Dying to Know Film Festival.

- My name is Caren Martineau.

I'm the producer for this Dying to Know Film Festival.

- What she's trying to do is really innovative.

She's trying to change the culture around death.

(old timey upbeat music) - What I wanted to do was to create this gathering place.

And the gathering place was really an invitation for people to come long before time of need.

What it is really is I'm an advocate of death literacy.

People say, "Like death?"

"Yes."

And they go, "Oh."

That's one reaction.

The other reaction is they lean in.

Death literacy is really a new form of learning.

It becomes a tool that one puts into their toolbox, hopefully, long before the end.

And you normalize a conversation which is essential.

- Film is integral in helping death literacy.

Art, whatever it is, is really the best way of communicating with the public about taboo topics like death.

- How does art and death literacy and showing movies at a film festival, like a very specific themed film festival like this, help people, like myself, navigate mortality and grief and things that we just absolutely struggle and avoid?

- When you sit in front of a large screen and you watch a film and you watch a story, there is a transcendence of sorts in which you lose yourself.

You can try to understand or completely understand what's going on, but no matter what, you're affected.

- This medium is actually the best way of doing it because it allows us a safe, nurturing environment to start the discussion.

And once the discussion starts, it will take a life of its own.

- It's not entertainment for entertainment's sake.

My hope is that it just continues to grow.

It's a huge endeavor to put together content and to give this a narrative, so that it is appealing and educating.

- Why wait until your grandma dies to teach a child that life is finite?

One of the things that's very clear in this film that we just saw is how children are exposed to death.

And kissing the body, a body in a coffin, is pretty shocking.

But these kids are gonna grow up much more aware of the fact that life ends.

So how do you want to live your life?

Is still the question I always come up with.

- The experience of doing this, of being an advocate of death literacy, has so enlivened my life.

I am authentically me now and extremely comfortable in having this truthful honesty about an experience that every one of us will go through.

You engage with these people in their personal narrative, which is a beautiful thing.

And then they can immediately, once they understand what I'm trying to do and what they've experienced, they want to be supportive.

"When's your next event?

Oh my goodness.

This sounds great."

(upbeat music) - [Meghan] To continue our exploration of confronting grief through a visual medium, we connected with Austin-based artist, educator, and death care specialist, Allie García - Hey!

- Here we go.

- For the past few years, Allie's hosted Ofrendas Grief Art classes in her home, offering a space for others to process grief through creative expression and community building.

How did you get into processing grief through art?

I know you are an artist.

- Yeah.

So I've been making art- - It may go hand in hand.

- Pretty much my entire life.

Growing up with a Mexican heritage and culture, death was always a part of life, so it wasn't something I ever shied away from.

So ever since I was a child, my art really focused on death and dying, and at the time I didn't realize was grief.

And started kind of being like the creepy cute.

You know, I did skulls and cute things everywhere, and then it really just evolved.

In 2016, I lost seven or eight people in a year's time and found my way through with a lot of therapy and a lot of art.

At the time I was in mortuary school, so I was also getting that scientific background about death.

And so kind of getting to combine all of those is where this journey particularly started.

- How did you end up in mortuary school?

What motivated you to pursue that?

- So back to being a weird little kid.

I always wanted to be a funeral director.

I always wanted to own a cemetery or do something in the death care system.

So after I went to school for ceramics, I did that for a long time.

I worked in a ceramic studio.

I found out that there was a college in San Antonio, maybe an hour and a half away.

Signed up immediately, got in, and left my art career to focus on this for a while.

- And now you're back kind of in both worlds.

- Yeah.

So I never really left the death care world.

I try to stay in there as much as I can, but I am back into the fine arts world where I'm teaching and back in ceramics and always still working on my own art.

- Very cool.

- So Allie, tell us what we're doing here today.

- Yeah, so we're gonna make some DIY nichos in order to honor our grief or someone we've lost.

A lot of times we think about grief as death or dying or just losing a single person, but people are grieving all the time.

It can be loss of a relationship, loss of a job, the past you thought you were gonna have or the future you thought you were gonna have.

We're gonna make these little 3D shadow boxes.

They have doors on them.

And I think the great thing about nichos having doors is that you can either leave it open and witness what you've created, or you can close the door on a chapter maybe you don't want to see or feel anymore, or just something that can remind you every once in a while So you can think of these like portable shrines you can take with you.

Keep it, display it, burn it, bury it, whatever feels right.

- I'm really excited to dive in and get our hands, literally, in the thick of it- - Yeah.

- Because I feel like we haven't done something like this for any of our, like I'm thinking after Aunt Dawn passed away, we all did sheet masks, like me and my female cousins, like that was the activity.

But it's like, no one talked about anything.

Like we're like, we're literally behind a mask of our emotions.

So I'm excited to see how it brings stuff up for people.

And not just us.

I want someone else to cry.

I can't be the only person who cries.

- [Allie] I'll help you.

I'll cry too.

- Cool, cool.

- [Allie] If you're here and you're feeling like a community, people usually tend to open up.

- Emily, why don't we just have you start with just, introduce yourself.

Tell us where you're from.

- My name is Emily.

I currently live just south of Austin in San Marcos.

And this is Gravity, sorry.

- Yeah, yeah.

The dog of the hour.

So how did you find Allie?

- My best friend had just passed away.

- [Meghan] Mm-hmm.

- [Emily] We were best friends from seventh, sixth grade.

Like all things, we kind of, you know, you drift in and drift out.

- Mm-hmm.

- But we stayed pretty solid.

Yeah, she was murdered.

- Oh my God.

- Yeah.

She was, and still it's an unsolved case.

But it, 2023 was wild.

And I think I just texted her and was like, "I think I need this right now."

- Uh-huh.

- "So, you got any availability?"

And so yeah, I came to Allie's home and felt awkward as ever.

And I came with my pictures of Jenni.

I realized three quarters of the way through that I had created something, but I think I pretty much talked the entire time, you know?

And like, it was incredibly cathartic and I took so many pictures.

Like I think I sat in her driveway for a while just because I'm sending it to everyone and I'm like, "Check it out."

I was pretty proud of it.

I was proud to have, you know, come across Allie.

- Have you found yourself using art to process grief or any type of loss even beyond that?

- Absolutely.

There was a moment, and it was last year, the year before, that I was like, "Oh, this is really kind of doing something for me."

There's a, not necessarily like an end game, but.

- Mm-hmm.

- I don't know, fulfillment or- - Yeah.

- Like, "Oh, I feel better and it's because of this."

- Yeah.

- "This outlet."

Arts has been pretty important for sure.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

Something to lean on.

- Do you think you'll do something for this sweet angel baby bear?

- I love that you just said that because, yeah, I have some fantastic photographs.

I'll actually be putting Gravity to sleep tomorrow morning.

- Mm-hmm.

- She's 10 years old.

She has some freakish, bizarre thing with her urethra.

And oh, there will be some things for sure, yeah.

Yeah.

She's so sweet.

- [Allie] So everyone, you can find your seats wherever you'd like.

I'll sit here, that way everyone can see me.

- The size is really daunting.

- Don't worry, they're very easy.

- I feel like it's more room for me to mess up.

- I think Ellen, when I showed her the box, she was like, "I can fit all my grief in there.

It's huge."

(group laughs) - For these DIY nichos, I'll be tapping into my art school dropout skills to make one for Aunt MaryKay, while Meghan tries not to mess hers up for Aunt Dawn.

(bright acoustic music) Since everyone's trying this workshop for the first time, what are your thoughts going into this and, you know, what are you hoping to get out of it?

- I'm hoping that the energy kind of flows out of me, whatever I'm holding onto, and actually feels like a safe and comfortable space to kind of honor what was and then be okay with moving forward.

It's really a lot for an art class, but I have faith in it.

(Meghan laughs) - I'm looking forward to having the end result in my home, having a special dedicated space to celebrate the very special life that, you know, I didn't have enough time with.

- I think this is also really good for somebody like me that uses a lot of humor to cover grief.

Because that's just the type of family that I grew up in.

And so like, I do art and crafts and all kinds of stuff as a way to, like, work through whatever I'm going through.

So this is like, I love this.

- With EMDR and various things like that, it's like your brain doesn't remember or process trauma and grief in the same way.

And so like actually doing something tactile, like the EMDR and moving your eyes or working through something like this while you're thinking about it actually helps your brain process through it.

So there's a lot of actual science behind it too.

- [Meghan] That's fascinating.

- [Justin] We have a clinical expert here.

I love that.

- No.

(laughs) - Okay.

- That's why I said, don't quote me.

- Okay.

No, that's awesome.

- [Allie] We're gonna try to get an approximate shape.

- I've lost a lot of family members.

My sister went missing.

A lot of my pets died just back to back.

Lost my job of almost nine years.

- Wow.

- I attempted suicide in January.

- I'm so sorry.

- So I was hospitalized and that's how Allie and I reconnected because I was very open about it on social media and I think that people should be because it allows other people to talk about it, so.

- Honestly, seeing Ellen being so brave to put that out there, when I lost so many people in 2016, I remember what it was like to be reaching out and just feeling abandoned.

- Yeah.

- So when I saw you reaching out, I was like, "This is a perfect reason to find you again."

- When you open up about something like that, it then makes everyone else who has experienced that more comfortable.

- Yeah.

- Even if they're not able to say it.

- Something just takes over you.

- Yeah.

- That's not you in that moment.

You need somebody that's been through it, that understands, that's going through it to reach out and grab your hand and pull you out.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I'm glad that Allie was like that for you and I'm glad that you're here.

- Yeah.

- Thanks for saying that.

- Yeah, thanks for sharing.

- [Allie] How we doing?

I know that's a lot.

- I'm gonna grab table tissues for everyone.

- Please do.

Yeah.

All right.

You'll notice you've made a nicho.

You can pull these all the way back, that way it's a little bit more easy to kind of open and close your doors.

We're gonna go ahead and try to paint them a coat of white.

Traditionally, they are very vibrant, but this depends on how you're feeling.

You can give it a base coat of something else if you'd like.

I think leaving it white and then giving it decorations is a really good idea.

This is really up to you how you want to honor the person or the thing that you're grieving.

- Am I allowed to call purple?

- What do y'all think about how society handles end of life and grief?

- They don't.

- Yeah.

- Literally.

- Started with that.

- People really can't even handle bad feelings or whatever the connotation is.

And end of life.

- We put our family members in nursing homes to forget about them and- - Yeah.

- Let somebody else deal with them.

- I feel like y'all would be really good death doulas.

I'm just saying.

- For sure.

- I'm just saying.

- Yeah, I did a training course just to see if I would be interested.

I think it's a lot better than a nursing home.

- There's definitely a shift in the younger generation with at least interest on education and options.

So I do think death doulas, natural burial, aquamation, all of these things are coming to the forefront and people are able to make better decisions and are at least more interested in learning or accepting that this happens to all of us.

- I think in the Black culture, it's very interesting that when you talk about funerals, it's solemn.

And like here in America for Black Americans, we think of it as a homegoing.

So it's always a celebration of life.

It's joyous music.

It's like upbeat, it's tempo.

I went to one last year and they did kind of like a horse cowboy stallion walk-in.

And so everybody was in white shirts and denim and matching and he was in like a Cinderella glass casket as he was like walking to the grave site.

And I just was like, "That's amazing."

It's very interesting to see like the dichotomy of how people take death, and it's so serious and it's so sad, and then like, we're here to celebrate your life, not to wallow in sadness of you not being there.

- Mm-hmm.

- Something my family has always said is just because someone dies, doesn't mean the love stops.

It's still there.

It just means that you love that person so much that you have the opportunity to feel such sadness.

Grief is just love in a new form.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Allie] A lot of art is created with emotion.

And when you look back, even historically, a lot of art has been made because someone is grieving or feeling deeply.

So you can take from that.

You can do a similar project that you see that inspires you.

Not everything has to be figurative.

We can learn to paint abstractly with colors and intentions.

Or even, you know, some of these kind of simple processing things, like drawing lines to music.

You can just find something that feels good to you and then use it forever.

- Mm-hmm.

It's nice to connect, especially as adults, because I feel like we don't get to play.

You know what I mean?

Like we just have to stick with the hard **** and keep it all in and like, it's like work, stress, grief.

- I don't think you ever truly heal from grief, right?

You live with it, you learn to live with it, you accept it, and you move through it, right?

It's not about healing and getting through the other side.

It's about accepting it, living with it, making beautiful things out of it, allowing it to be in your life and living with it because you're gonna grieve something else later anyway.

♪ If you've ever been open ♪ ♪ There's no way of knowing ♪ ♪ That the way that ♪ - You really proud of the washi tape you applied?

- I am.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

That was really hard to stick on there.

- [Justin] It's kind of a cheat to avoid painting.

- Why do you think I put so many rhinestones on it?

♪ To bring us together again ♪ - Fail-proof.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music continues) - I legit eat hummus every day of my life.

When I go, I really feel like they're not gonna need to embalm me or anything.

- Oh.

- I am definitely made up of mostly hummus.

- I though you meant like when you go as in when you go to the bathroom.

- No.

When I, well.

- It just slides right out of you.

- It is also mostly hummus, but I'm talking about my insides.

Reflecting back season one, the biggest thing for us is the fact of like where we were in our lives.

When we first started filming three years ago, we were literally within just a few months of having our first kids.

Exploring the different themes and areas that we did while pre-kids and post-kids in such a short timeframe has given me immense perspective.

- I'm going to be constantly thinking about how to, how will I be having these conversations with Noah beyond just buying him that book with Rosita celebrating Día de Los Muertos, which was a phenomenal find.

- Do I feel any different?

Do I feel a little bit more comfortable with the end?

- Absolutely not.

- Yeah.

I feel a little optimistic in that, because of this movement happening of death literacy and people opening up the conversation and finding new ways to process things like death and grief, we have met such profound, enlightened people.

Once you accept death and grief and end of life, you can really start living.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Like, you live the fullest life once you've found a way to just kind of be- - Accept.

- Accept.

Right?

- Yeah.

- It doesn't have to be like fully comfortable, can't wait to die.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Just like- - You're not in denial of it.

- Not in denial.

Everything somehow trickles and funnels back to death.

- Yeah.

- It's like so much in life.

- Yeah.

One of my biggest OCD triggers is fear of death and fear of my loved ones dying and me dying too soon.

Looking back, this show has been exposure therapy for me.

Things happen, period.

It doesn't have to be for a reason.

It's like I just want to be able to have less anxiety around, like, how can I die today?

Or like, it's every time I back up out of my driveway, I just like "Final Destination" see a car coming across.

- Well, let's get some ice cream.

- [Meghan] Yes.

♪ I'll be long gone ♪ ♪ Thanks for the songs ♪ ♪ Guess it's time to wake up ♪ ♪ From this trip we've been on ♪ - [Justin] Like Allie said, you don't truly heal from grief.

You learn to live with it, accept it, and make beautiful things out of it.

Getting to think about our hilarious and perfect aunts every time we work on "How We Grieve" has made this process a little bit easier.

And there's definitely other areas of death and grief we like to explore.

- [Meghan] Plus, we've now befriended too many people in the death care space that we're afraid of disappointing if we can't keep the show going as long as we possibly can.

Until next time.

♪ Thanks for the free ride ♪ ♪ And all of the good times ♪ ♪ Thanks for the free ride ♪ ♪ And all of the good times ♪ (soft upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by the City of Austin Office of Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment, Tommy and Alexandra Maher, Sandra Honaker, John Wright, Janet Walsh, Midori Munguia, Grace Horvath, Jasmine Mobasseri, Brenda Isaacs-Booth, Matt Walsh.

Additional funding was provided by.

(soft upbeat music) And by.

(soft upbeat music) (no audio) (bright music) (bright upbeat music)