Director: Tommy Baker
Plot: This story follows the history of the most over buried commercial cemetery in America. It comes full circle to present day and documents a non profit’s efforts to take care of the abandoned and abused burial ground.
Tagline – The True Story of The Most Grossly abused Cemetery in the Country
Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Interesting Documentary
Story: Facing East starts as we see the investigation into the Eastern State Cemetery, a location in Louisville, where the owner had been burying people on top of other graves, which has been happening for decades, they didn’t hide it, they just kept taking the money from the families that wanted to bury their relatives.
We get to see how the federal investigation went through the grave to learn the shocking truth and how the owners were running the cemetery breaking nearly every law in the book, with it not sat abandoned with families needing to find their own way to their loved ones graves.
Thoughts on Facing East
Final Thoughts – When it comes to a documentary, we always get the spotlight thrown onto a situation which is getting out of hand, this does show us the shocking behaviour being cemetery owners who took people’s money and just buried people on top of each other, following part of the criminal case against them after breaking the laws. We have a mix of archive footage showing the case, mixed with the interviews of former employees that opened up the case and victims of the operation. This is interesting to see, because it could have been happening for years in other location, while we do only focus on one place that has been exposed, it does pose the question about how many more could be out there.
Overall: Eye opening documentary.
