Join us for Michigan’s Premiere Screening of this award-winning documentary. Includes Q & A with local and international experts, including Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council.

What if our “final act” could be a gift to the planet - a force for regeneration?

Musician, folk dancer, and psychiatrist Clark Wang (originally from Ann Arbor) prepares for his own green burial, determined that his final resting place will benefit the earth.

Enabling Clark’s wish is green burial pioneer Joe Sehee, who aims to realize this concept’s vast potential by helping define its goals and standards and endeavoring to open the world’s largest conservation burial ground.

Moved by Clark’s persistence and relying on Joe’s guidance, local cemetarian Dyanne Matzkevich, though avowedly “not a greenie,” establishes the first natural burial ground in North Carolina. Together she and Clark endeavor to protect the tract of forest adjacent to her conventional cemetery, developing a close bond. While Clark continues the battle to overcome his illness, he and his partner Jane find great comfort in the thought that his death – whenever it happens – will be a force for regeneration.

A Will for the Woods is an immersive, life-affirming depiction of people coming to terms with mortality by embracing their connection to timeless natural cycles.

Winner of the Audience Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Programmer’s Choice Award for Best Doc Feature at the Virginia Film Festival, the FILM Fork in the Road Award at the Greentopia Festival, and the Audience Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival at Duke University, TED blog named this film one of the “9 documentaries that you need to see this year” [2013].

What is Green Burial?

A green burial is a simple and natural alternative to resource-intensive contemporary burial or cremation. The deceased is laid to rest in the earth in a biodegradable casket or shroud, without a vault, in a woodland or other natural setting, and with a fieldstone or indigenous plant marking the grave. This practice can be used as a conservation tool, enabling the acquisition, restoration, and stewardship of natural areas. It was prevalent for thousands of years (and still is in some parts of the world, including in traditional Muslim and Jewish burials).