When it first made headlines in 2010, Jason Leach’s UK-based company And Vinyly – which presses the ashes of the deceased into vinyl records for loved ones wishing to hold onto their memory – appeared to be something of a macabre novelty. But there might be more to preserving the departed (quite literally) on records than first meets the eye – and ear. Hearing Madge explores how Leach’s venture was given new meaning when he was approached by a man looking to save his mother’s recollections that he had recorded shortly before her death. Surprisingly touching, Andrea Lewis’s short documentary is both a profile of an unusual business and a thought-provoking contemplation of the ways we chose to remember the dead.
Director: Andrea Lewis
videoLife stages
Grief, healing and laughter coexist at a unique retreat for widows and widowers
15 minutes
videoAgeing and death
Memories of friends and neighbours light the streets of a seaside village in England
11 minutes
videoCognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
videoMeaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
videoAgeing and death
We’re not the only animals that appear to grieve. What are the implications?
6 minutes
videoBiology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
videoLife stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
13 minutes
videoStories and literature
To capture grief in poetry is to describe the ineffable. Here’s why Tennyson did it best
8 minutes
videoStories and literature
Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone
5 minutes