“The Last Ecstatic Days" at CASI (Center for Active Seniors) -- May 18.
Sunday, May 18, 1:30 p.m.
CASI (Center for Active Seniors), 1035 West Kimberly Road, Davenport IA
With the film presented as the second in a pair of events in the organization's "Let's Have a Conversation" end-of-life series, Davenport's CASI (Center for Active Seniors) will host a screening of the documentary The Last Ecstatic Days on May 18, the film praised by the Boston Globe as a “courageous end-of-life chronicle” that “overflows with compassion.”
The Last Ecstatic Days follows the story of Ethan Sisser, a young man afflicted with brain cancer. He had been sitting alone in his hospital room, but when he begins live-streaming his death journey on social media, thousands of people around the world join him and celebrate his courage. Still, Ethan envisions more – to teach the world how to die. To honor his final wish of filming his death, his physician, Dr. Aditi Sethi, transports him to a quiet house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. What unfolds is a story that’s rarely glimpsed: how a community of strangers helps an unhoused man die on his own terms. A sensory immersion into leaving the body, The Last Ecstatic Days reveals a man who will not let us forget him, even after he's taken his final breath.
Inspired by her experience of caring for Ethan, Aditi, who was already a hospice doctor and death doula, founded the Center for Conscious Living and Dying in Asheville. Featured in the documentary, Aditi is an emerging and important voice for shifting our culture’s understanding and approach to dying, death, and bereavement care. Film producer Hannah Fowler is a hospice nurse, end-of-life doula, and facilitator and educator, as well as the director of education and engagement for the Center of Conscious Living and Dying. And The Last Ecstatic Days director Scott Kirschenbaum was also the producer and director of You're Looking At Me Like I Live Here and I Don't, a documentary on Alzheimer's and aging that premiered on the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens.
The Last Ecstatic Days will be screened at Davenport's CASI (Center for Active Seniors) on May 18, admission to the 1:30 presentations is $3-6, and more information is available by calling (563)386-7477 and visiting CASISeniors.org.
