Hard-pressed by an illness in the family, the Colli-Colli face financial and emotional challenges using traditional solidarity to muster resources and comfort. Drought threatens the village's crucial corn crop.

Kurtal Snake Spirit tells the story of Spider, a sprightly 80 year old Aboriginal elder who travels from Fitzroy Crossing into the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia to visit a jila - a sacred waterhole. Spider is one of the main custodians responsible for the practices that take place there. For the first time, he is taking his family and community elders back to his birthplace, where he will communicate with their ancestors through Kurtal,...

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...

"Ant is back in Chicago for a funeral, and he typically enjoys funerals. Since most of his family has passed away, he finds himself strangely attracted to their endearing qualities: the hyperbolic language, the stoner altar boy, seeing friends in suits for the first time. That is, until the tragic death of Ray--Ant's childhood friend, Vince's teenage cousin. Ray was the younger third-wheel that Ant and Vince were stuck babysitting while in high school,...

"As a Gracekeeper, Callanish administers shoreside burials, laying the dead to their final resting place deep in the depths of the ocean. Alone on her island, she has exiled herself to a life of tending watery graves as penance for a long-ago mistake that still haunts her. Meanwhile, North works as a circus performer with the Excalibur, a floating troupe of acrobats, clowns, dancers, and trainers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining...

The Kanaga mask is used in deeply sacred rituals by the Dogon people of Mali. Carving this mask is as important a ritual as the ceremonies in which the mask is used.

This traditionally ethnographic sequence film focuses on the negotiations betwen representatives of two families during a payment of bridewealth. In the past the husband's group would carry a spear and a sword to hang in the wife's house. Now, a payment is made as a substitute for the spear and sword.

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!