Ehsan and I have some interesting conversations about our shared fascination with human behavior and ideology. Our conversations run the gamut from absurdly dark humor to outlandish theories. Sometimes esoteric, sometimes extreme and sometimes completely made up musings about theoretical physics, existentialism and alternate universes. I read an interview with a mortician that left a lasting impression on funeral practices in western culture. Practices I was familiar with and had witnessed many times was cast into an entirely new light. This epiphany became the catalyst for conversation around death and how the living struggle to compartmentalize and mentally process it. The topic was fascinating, and we started researching the way different cultures process the concept of death from a psychological, spiritual, and ritualistic perspective.

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Given some research we had done on Vajrayana Buddhism, we discovered Sky Burials. The duality of beautiful symbolism and the seemingly brutal nature of the practice immediately appealed to us. The practice, taken out of context could easily read like a gruesome headline. But in fact, it’s a highly coveted burial ceremony in Tibetan Buddhism that makes sense upon understand a few fundamental beliefs. Presenting this practice in an unbiased, unpolarizing way that remained true to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and culture was a challenge we embraced.

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We set out to make Blue Kangling, an observational documentary film about the Tibetan Buddhists idea of death and the sacred ritual of Sky Burials. Our subject matter experts were not scholars, narrators or personalities but the people who teach, live and carry out these practices every day. The idea was to capture the perspective of a cross section of people who could provide personal experiences that combined, would reveal a greater collective consciousness.