History Graduate Student Premiers First Documentary About Cemeteries in Missoula

History MA student Dylan Yonce will show her first documentary, The Bodies Beneath Us, at the Roxy Theater on May 6th and May 13th, 2024 at 7:30 PM. Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.theroxytheater.org/show/the-bodies-beneath-us/.

The Bodies Beneath Us is the culmination of two years of research into two cemeteries forgotten under Missoula's Rattlesnake neighborhood. Half of the documentary focuses on the former site of the Missoula County Poor Farm–now Rattlesnake Elementary School and Pineview Park–and the approximately 1,000 bodies buried on that property. In this section of the film, Yonce reflects on growing up in Missoula and interview the people (including Professor Leif Fredrickson!!) who have helped keep this history alive. The other half of the documentary focuses on the historic Chinese cemetery at the base of Mt. Jumbo and how the exclusion of and violence against Chinese immigrants in Montana's early history has remained pervasive into the present day, especially through the scapegoating of Asian Americans in the state's electoral politics. It is a hybrid historical and political film.