Movie Preview : An Unflinching Look at Suicide from "The Bridge"

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Opening this Friday in select theaters is a controversial new documentary, The Bridge - a film showing 23 of the 24 suicides that took place at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in the year 2004. Director Eric Steel assembled a dedicated crew who set up a camera every day for a year and caught video of everyday people coolly stepping over the railing and jumping to their deaths. The footage is possessed of an eerie calm, a profound stillness, and is ultimately a stunning portrayal of some lonely souls' final seconds on Earth.

Not surprisingly, The Bridge has been drawing the fire of suicide prevention groups who see the film as glorifying the allure of this already alarmingly popular suicide site. Since the bridge's construction in 1937, over 1,300 suicides have taken place. One about every two weeks.

Steel has been accused of serving up suicide as entertainment, misleading the city about his project to gain filming access and callously using the lives of the jumpers for his own gain.

Steel says:
(the goal is to)
..."allow us to see into the most impenetrable corners of the human mind and challenge us to think and talk about suicide in profoundly different ways."

"It is a movie about the human spirit in crisis. It is a movie about people,"
The Bridge opens in select theaters Friday October 27th.
Hi Quality Quicktime Trailer

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/18782/Movie-Preview--An-Unflinching-Look-at-Suicide-from-The-Bridge/