Obituaries: a dying art

Writing obituaries is a dying art. Memorialising the lives and the deaths of the rich and the famous tends to be done online, often in 140 characters or less. One place where the tradition and the art of obituary writing is being preserved is at The New York Times, where a dedicated team of journalists writes three or four obituaries every day. Vanessa Gould gives an inside look at life on The New York Times' obituaries desk in her documentary Obit which is screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington.

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