The bridge

Format:

Video disc

Title:

The bridge

ISBN:

9781417201389

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 videodisc (94 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in.

General Note:

Disc label title.

Originally released as a motion picture in 2006.

Widescreen version.

Special features include: behind-the-scenes featurette, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline PSA.

Contents:

Common occurrence -- Gene -- Lisa -- Family recounts -- Wally & Mary Manikow -- Photographer's perspective -- Kevin Hines: A survivor's struggle -- Process of deciding -- David, Ruby and Jim -- False romanticism -- Hurt left behind -- End credits.

Summary:

After spending an entire year filming the Golden Gate Bridge, director Eric Steel and his crew documented close to two dozen suicides and many near fatal moments. This imagery is accompanied by interviews with families, friends, witnesses and several of the surviving attempters.

Reading Level:

MPAA rating: R.

Subject(s):

Suicide -- California -- San Francisco.

Suicidal behavior -- California -- San Francisco.

Documentary films.

Suicide.

Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, Calif.)

Geographic Term:

Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, Calif.)

California -- San Francisco.

California -- San Francisco -- Golden Gate Bridge.

Genre:

Videodiscs.

DVD-Video discs.

Video recordings for the hearing impaired.

Documentary.

Documentaries and factual films and video.

Added Author:

Steel, Eric.

Added Corporate Author:

IFC Productions (Firm)

Easy There Tiger.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	362.28 Bridge	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

The Golden Gate Bridge is an iconic structure; a symbol of San Francisco, the West, freedom - and something more, something spiritual, something words cannot describe.The director and crew spent an entire year focusing on the Bridge. Running cameras for almost every daylight minute, they documented nearly two dozen suicides and a great many unrealized attempts. In addition, the director captured nearly 100 hours of incredibly frank, deeply personal, often heart-wrenching interviews with the families and friends of the departed, as well as with several of the attempters themselves. THE BRIDGE is a visual and visceral journey into one of life's gravest taboos, offering glimpses into the darkest, and possibly most impenetrable corners of the human mind.

Summary

Inspired by a New Yorker story, "Jumpers," written by Tad Friend, director Eric Steel decided to train cameras on the Golden Gate Bridge over the course of 2004 to capture the people who attempted to leap off the famed structure, the site of more suicides than anywhere else in the world. He also tracked down and interviewed the friends, family members, and eyewitnesses to further recreate the events leading up to the incident and to try to explain what led these people to want to kill themselves, especially at this specific site. The documentary's primary subjects all struggled with mental illness, including severe depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders, and the documentary struggles to understand their illness while illuminating the anger and hurt of their loved ones. Most questions remain unanswered, turning on the darker recesses of the mind. The shots of the bridge wreathed in fog turn the Golden Gate into a metaphor for a bridge between life and death, sanity and mental disturbance, and extreme isolation and connection with society. Though the camera crew worked with a set of guidelines, including that they would call in someone they thought was going to jump, the documentary still includes lengthy footage of the moments leading up to and including the suicides, so discretion is advised for sensitive viewers. ~ Michael Buening, Rovi

Reviews (1)

Library Journal Review

Stimulated by a 2003 New Yorker article exploring "the fatal grandeur" of California's Golden Gate Bridge, the world's most popular suicide destination, film producer Steel began what is surely one of the most controversial and provocative directorial debuts in recent years by obtaining a permit under false pretenses, deploying a camera crew around the bridge during nearly every daylight hour between January and December 2004, and intentionally capturing the final moments of 23 of the approximately two dozen suicides that occurred that year. (Steel claims that six near-suicides were prevented by the crew's policy of speed-dialing bridge authorities when a suicide appeared likely.) The documentary Steel constructs around this questionable material is, however, far less controversial than the morality of the methods involved in its production. Footage of six suicides is featured, but its appearance occurs within a context composed mostly of absorbing interviews with friends, relatives, and witnesses of those who died (and, incredibly, one jumper who survived) interwoven with shots of the bridge from a variety of angles and times of day. Although the interviews suggest some common traits among the victims (mental illness, depression, and, perhaps, the cumulative power of chronic disappointment), Steel refrains from explicitly addressing the question of why the bridge should be the chosen site, opting instead to leave one in humble wonder by revisiting the bridge's expansive beauty from so many different vantages and under so many different effects of weather and light. Recommended, with care, for most collections.-Robert A. Sica, Eastern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Richmond (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.