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 New York filmmaker Kim Snyder's work has allowed her to be privy
to what she calls a "terrible club that no-one wants to be a
member of" that is made up of communities traumatized by gun
violence in schools, workplaces, churches or places of leisure.
Two short films shown at New York's Tribeca film festival last
week - "Surviving Theater 9" and "Notes from Dunblane: Lessons
From a School Shooting" - look at the emotional and mental toll
of gun violence in hopes of helping both current survivors, and
those yet to come.
"Every time a shooting comes, my heart just breaks for the
people who are about to live through what we have all lived
through, and knowing that it will forever change their lives,"
said McGrath, who wrote and directed "Surviving Theater 9."
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks
gun-related deaths based on official records, there were 346
mass shootings - defined as four or more people shot in one
incident - in America in 2017.
McGrath's 40-minute film recounts his own struggles and those of
two other people after the 2012 shooting that killed 12 people
and injured 70 in Colorado during a midnight screening of "The
Dark Knight Rises."
All the experiences are true, ranging from flashbacks, crass
comments, guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as
well as coping mechanisms learned at the Aurora Resilience
Center.
"I thought that by showing our stories and honoring the
survivors that I went through the healing process with, we could
help some other folks," said McGrath,
McGrath wasn't among those shot but he nevertheless had a hard
time for years afterward and said he made the film because he
couldn't find anything like it.
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"I was going to therapists and reading tomes about psychology and
PTSD and ways to get through it. But I was craving something I could
just sit down and watch," he said.
Snyder's 22-minute film also focuses on healing rather than the
shooters or the polarizing issues of gun control.
"Notes from Dunblane" looks at the relationship between two Catholic
priests in Newtown, Connecticut, and Dunblane, Scotland, over eerily
similar shootings in elementary schools in both small towns in 2012
and 1996 respectively.
Newtown's Father Bob Weiss and Dunblane's Father Basil O'Sullivan
began writing to each other after the Newtown school shooting,
sharing their struggles to explain and comfort the families of the
children shot dead, many whom they also buried.
"It really points to the epidemic of how many communities are now
connected over this issue and how many people can name people they
know who are affected by gun violence," said Snyder.
Snyder and McGrath hope their films will be shown at churches,
schools, colleges and community centers and be available to all of
those who struggle to get their lives back together.
Snyder said that in making the film she came to understand "this
need to reach out to those who have walked in these shoes that
no-one can imagine (and) the impetus for them to help the next ones,
to pay it forward."
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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