THE BRIDGE
Eric Steel
USA, 2005, 93 minutes
DC Premiere
It's a typical, peaceful morning in San Francisco. Commuters drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and tourists cross the famous landmark on foot. Suddenly, one portly older gentleman clumsily climbs over the four-foot railing and without hesitation jumps to his death. In Eric Steel's shocking and controversial debut film, THE BRIDGE, this scene becomes uncomfortably familiar as several desperate individuals decide to end their lives by jumping from the bridge where more people commit suicide each year than anywhere else.
Inspired by a 2003 story in The New Yorker about the lure the bridge has for so many jumpers, Steel recorded the Golden Gate Bridge every day for a year, capturing twenty-four suicides on film and preventing a handful more. Almost as an act of contrition for the disquieting images he has recorded, he attempts to piece together what caused some of these people to kill themselves. Through interviews with friends and family of several of the two-dozen people whose suicides he observed, the film explores the mindset of those suffering from extreme depression or other mental illness, who feel that suicide is the only solution.
The film more pointedly raises difficult questions about the role of the filmmaker, bystanders and, by extension, the audience, who observe individuals preparing to jump to their deaths, and what it is to be complicit in this profoundly uncomfortable voyeuristic role.
Warning: This film contains explicit images of suicides.
-Brian Ambrose
DIRECTOR BIO
Eric Steel began his career as a creative executive at Walt Disney Pictures after graduating from Yale University in 1985. Shifting gears, he worked as an Editor at Simon & Schuster and then as a Senior Editor at HarperCollins, where he published many award-winning books of fiction and non-fiction. In 1995, he became Senior Vice President of Scott Rudin Productions, where he was the Executive Producer of ANGELA'S ASHES, and Co-Producer of BRINGING OUT THE DEAD and SHAFT. In 2003, Steel formed his own company, Easy There Tiger, and is currently developing several documentaries and features. THE BRIDGE is his directorial debut.
Print Source:
Jessica Wolfson
IFC TV
11 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10001
jswolfson@ifctv.com
917.542.6328
6/16 at 8:15 PM
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