On Sunday, May 7^th at 2 pm, Ukiah Branch is hosting the first film in a new series of Sunday afternoon films Seven Songs for a Long Life, a PBS/POV documentary.

Filmmaker Amy Hardie goes inside Strathcarron Hospice in Scotland, where six patients, some stricken with terminal illness, face pain and uncertainty with song and bravery. Three years in the making, Seven Songs for a Long Life captures the often quirky patients’ reflections on life and their own mortality, as well as their heart-tugging renditions of pop music classics by everyone from Sinatra to R.E.M. The film debuted on PBS on Monday, Jan. 30, 2017.

Amy Hardie is a documentary filmmaker and head of research at the Scottish Documentary Institute, which she set up in 2004 with Noe Mendelle and which is pioneering the innovative use of Seven Songs for a Long Life in the healthcare field. Her film The Edge of Dreaming, which aired on POV in 2010, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kiev International Film Festival. She graduated from the National Film and Television School in 1990. She directed and produced six films with the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, including Stem Cell Revolutions, which was named best documentary at the Vedere la Scienza Film Festival in Milan. She and her Stem Cell Revolutions co-director, Clare Blackburn, won the Tam Dalyell Prize for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science in 2012. Seven Songs for a Long Life is a production of SDI Productions Ltd and Amy Hardie Productions Ltd, coproduced with Hard Working Movies LLC and BBC Scotland in association with American Documentary | POV.