Sunset Park producer’s "Life After" to air Nov 3 on PBS
The documentary “Life After,” produced by Sunset Park resident Colleen Cassingham, will air on PBS’s Independent Lens on Nov. 3.
The film, directed by Reid Davenport and produced through Multitude Films, examines the question of assisted dying through a disability-justice lens, exposing the moral dilemmas and profit motives that surround the “right to die,” and amplifying the voices of disabled activists and advocates fighting for justice and dignity.
“The point of view of the film is about autonomy,” Cassingham said of her first major feature as lead producer. “It’s trying to provoke an expanded understanding of what true autonomy would really look like in a society that is ableist, racist, capitalistic, that limits what choices we have over our own lives.”
“Life After” premiered at Sundance 2025 in the U.S. Documentary Competition, where it received a Special Jury Award, and has since screened at DC/DOX, the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the BFI London Film Festival. Its national PBS broadcast marks the film’s television debut.
Producing with care
As a producer, Cassingham’s role involves not only the logistics of arranging shoots and securing funding, but also serving as the director’s main creative collaborator, developing ideas and supporting the film’s vision through every stage of production.
Because her films often confront painful or politically charged subjects, she said she devotes as much attention to how people are treated on set as to what ends up on screen.
“A big part of the job is also making sure that our participants and our team are cared for, that we’re making films in an ethical way,” she said. That slower, relationship-based process, she added, makes the work “less extractive” than traditional journalism.
Cassingham is candid about the challenges facing independent filmmakers, including limited distribution, shrinking opportunities on streaming platforms, and the ongoing loss of federal support for public broadcasting. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the federal agency that once provided a major portion of PBS’s funding, is now winding down operations after Congress rescinded more than $1 billion in previously approved public media funding.
While she takes heart in seeing donations, especially for rural PBS stations, rise sharply in recent months and remains optimistic that the network’s diverse funding sources can help sustain it, she is worried.
“If PBS were ever to shut down, that would really foreclose opportunities for filmmakers to keep making work,” she said. “We’re already having to do so much self-distribution to bring our films to audiences.”
Earlier work
Cassingham’s earlier credits include “Pray Away” (Netflix 2021), about the American “ex-gay” movement; “Always in Season,” a documentary on racial violence in the South; and “It’s Only Life After All,” about the Indigo Girls.
She also helped produce “To Use a Mountain,” directed by Casey Carter, a meditative exploration of nuclear waste, land, and the bureaucratic systems that shape rural America. The film premiered at Visions du Réel 2025 in Switzerland and screens in New York on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. as part of the Science New Wave Festival at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema. Tickets available here.
“It’s about the state violence of bureaucracy and who gets to make decisions about things that carry huge risk,” Cassingham said.
Finding community and next steps
Cassingham moved to Sunset Park this summer with her partner, Roberto, and their poodle, Frankie, after living in Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. She said she immediately noticed a deeper sense of political and interpersonal connection.
“I just found there was kind of a sense of individualism [in other neighborhoods],” she said. “Here I definitely feel that sense of community.”
She pointed to local activism such as the Workers’ Movement for Liberation, a working-class youth collective that tables weekly in Sunset Park to build solidarity around labor and anti-imperialist causes, and to the neighborhood’s visible activism in support of Palestinian rights as evidence of the area’s living political fabric.
She would like to eventually coordinate with local venues, such as the Sunset Stoop, to organize more documentary screenings in the future. While the bar has screened documentaries in the past, including “Emergent City,” the next film screening will be “Brooklyn’s Gone to Hell,” a low-budget horror-comedy directed by and starring Sunset Stoop owner Roberto Beltre. Tickets available here.
When she’s not working on films or traveling for festivals, Cassingham spends hours at the park with Frankie and says she makes it a point to take visitors to La Flor de Izúcar Café for tres leches.
As for the future, rather than diving immediately into another project, she’s considering taking time to strengthen Multitude Films’ approach to creative distribution, finding new ways to connect their films to audiences and movements that can carry their impact further.