Vulture Culture: Creating Afterlives

description

A girl on a first date spots a bloated, decomposing muskrat along their romantic lakeside walk. She stops, takes out her trusty plastic gloves and bag, and brings it home with her on the train. A contemporary artist uses foraged bones to create art pieces that comment on humanity's critical disconnection from death. An Indigenous man living in the city cleans bones and pins delicate insects in his small apartment, making terrariums that honor the beauty of animal parts. A small business owner puts out internet ads looking for deceased farm animals. A Toronto man starts an alternative pet memorial service, creating preserved body parts and articulated skeletons for grieving families. At boisterous oddity markets in the heart of downtown Toronto, tables are piled with jarred fetuses, skulls, taxidermy birds, vertebrae necklaces, and excited customers hand over bills in exchange for new additions to their collections. The documentary offers a look at vulture culture practitioners, a diverse community of amateur taxidermists, bone scavengers, collectors of dead things, and quirky lovers of the macabre, and the strange afterlife that they create for these animals.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Shorts That Are Not Pants 2024