Life After Life
LOGLINE
A groundbreaking burial practice disrupts the funeral industry, prompting those within to rethink rituals and drive a transformative shift in our relationship with death and the environmental legacy we leave behind.
IMPACT STATEMENT
After more than three years in development and production on Life After Life, the SIFF / Satterberg Documentary Grant will give us the opportunity to make the film we set out to create so many years ago, allowing us the time and space to focus on storytelling, character development, and visual style. This grant empowers us to invest in our local filmmaking community while also launching crucial impact initiatives in partnership with death-positive community groups across the Pacific Northwest. Together with our participants, we aim to give voice to the grieving, foster community around our shared mortality, and create a personally impactful experience that weaves together ritual and environmental legacy.
FILMMAKERS
JJ Gerber - Director
JJ Gerber is a Primetime Emmy nominated creative producer and storyteller, with 10 years experience leading non-fiction projects. JJ’s feature documentary credits include the 2024 News & Doc Emmy Nominated Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi (MTV Docs 2023), Harmontown (SXSW 2014), and We Are Blood (Released by The Orchard in 2015). He was a consulting producer on the feature film Beauty Is Embarrassing (Emmy Nominee / PBS Independent Lens 2014), helping with the strategy and implementation of nationwide theatrical self-distribution with Future You Media.
JJ started MOVEMENT CONTENT in 2017 to create visceral non-fiction media. Under the banner he has produced two feature documentary films, A Song Film by Kishi Bashi: Omoiyari (2024 Emmy Nominee, MTV Documentary Films, 2023) and Life After Life (in production). Movement Content also produced multiple music videos for indie-pop dream-boats Generationals, an immersive gallery experience for The Seattle Symphony, and has acted as consultant for multiple short documentary films.
On the side JJ is active in community building through his role on the board of the Seattle Documentary Association, serving Seattle and the Pacific Northwest region. He is also active in leadership roles with the Documentary Producers Alliance advocating for an equitable, ethical and sustainable industry on a national level.
Clementine Briand - Producer
Clementine Briand began her film career in Paris, spending four years at a commercial production company, where she worked with brands like Coca-Cola, IBM, L’Oreal, RadioShack, and McKinsey & Co. She worked across various mediums, including corporate videos, television (CNN, BBC), and film, with projects taking her throughout Europe, the U.S., Georgia, China, Mongolia, Israel, and Libya. Upon returning to the U.S., she shifted her focus to the documentary industry, starting by producing short-form content for the Emmy award-winning ITVS. As a freelancer, she contributed to various projects, such as The History of White People, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and 2019, and was a 2021 Webby Nominee for Video: Diversity and Inclusion. She also worked on Personhood, a feature documentary that premiered at Doc NYC 2020 and won the 2020 ABA Silver Gavel Award. After earning her Master's in documentary filmmaking in Berlin, she founded Farrago, an artist collective dedicated to non-fictionprojects across podcasts, digital series, and both short- and long-form content.
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