Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

Learning Gravity / The Undertaking

    • Director

      Cathal Black

  • Category

    Documentary
    Literature

Thomas Lynch is a Detroit-based mortician who has run the family business for over 30 years and arranged perhaps 6,000 funerals. When not an American undertaker, he is an Irishman who lives in Moveen, Co. Clare (from where his grandparents emigrated) and a poet and essayist of immense repute. Drawing on his work, this film is an engaging and inspiring journey into his unusual world. The film is neither morose nor melancholic, but is rich in Lynch’s passion and humour: for him, it is only through dealing with death that we can truly get on with the business of living. With Lynch’s writing always at its core, Black has crafted a film that is sensitive, beautiful and, in its own right, a finely crafted piece of poetry. (Notes by Sunniva O'Flynn)

70 minutes, Ireland, 2007, Colour

IFI CINEMAS TODAY


The IFI is supported
by The Arts Council

Arts Council of Ireland