A thought-provoking film which explores the loves, hopes and fears of several donors to the University of Otago's body bequest programme is already attracting positive responses in Otago and overseas.
The film, titled Donated to Science, was made in Dunedin, and screens tonight at 9.30pm on TV3.
It was made by Otago medical graduate and film-maker Dr Paul Trotman, of PRN Films, and produced by Dr Trotman and Prof Helen Nicholson, a professor in the anatomy and structural biology department and dean of the Otago School of Medical Sciences.
Dr Trotman said interviews were conducted in 2006 with several people who planned to donate their bodies to the Otago Medical School for students to dissect.
"We asked them about their lives and their loves, their hopes, their fears and, of course, their bodies," he said.
The donors and the students undertaking human dissection gave film-makers permission to follow them through the whole process.
"For the first time on film, we have the chance to share that amazing journey of the students, the donors and their families."
Prof Nicholson and Dr Trotman spoke about the film project at a major international anatomy conference in Cape Town, South Africa, in August, and several hundred conference participants received their own advance screening of the documentary, at their request.
The response had been positive and the families of donors featuring in the film had also been supportive, school officials said.
Growing teaching requirements within a larger Otago health sciences division, as well as increased medical research activity, mean that more bodies are needed than was the case several decades ago.
But Prof Nicholson said the film had been made to enable people, particularly prospective donors and their families as well as medical students, to learn more about what, for them, was otherwise a largely unknown process.
"When somebody dies, they come to us very quickly and the families are left not really knowing what's happening, and that not knowing can often make it more difficult for the families to get through their grieving process," she said.
• The Otago Medical School was founded in 1876 and initially relied on the unclaimed bodies of the poor and mentally ill.
The Otago body bequest programme began in 1943.
Donations had since increased steadily, with about 45 bodies now being received each year.