Skip to main content

I Work With the Dead


  • Michael J. Perkins, Director
  • Darija Pichanick, Producer

About the Project

What does it take to make your living working with dead bodies? The funeral homes workers, the morticians, the medical examiners and forensic detectives. What have they gleamed by working with the vessel after the soul has gone? Does it make them more spiritual, kinder to others around them or does it harden their minds into thinking that a body is just that, a body? What kinds of insight into our fragile existence have they come upon by just doing their everyday job? And, maybe most importantly, why did they choose this type of career for their life's work?



By spending a week with workers from the different industries that work with dead bodies on a daily basis; from funeral homes to forensic research laboratories, or even the airmen at the US military Dignified Transfer Center, we'll explore these questions and the people that work in these hidden jobs.