Monday, July 18, 2011

The High Level Bridge



The High Level Bridge

Edmonton, 2010

4:39

Dir: Trevor Anderson

HD Video

Essay


In this latest documentary essay, Trevor Anderson points his camera at an iconic Edmonton landmark then chucks the piece of equipment off its edge to plummet, still recording, into a snowy bank beside the cold North Saskatchewan River. Over a five-minute montage of beautifully composed shots of the High Level Bridge and the views from its walkways during a bleak and chilly winter, Anderson peppers his customary, droll patter with historical factoids about his subject. Between these humorous, true anecdotes, almost Becketian in their absurdity, he also reveals the bridge’s uglier history – a dirty secret omitted from the tourist brochures that everyone in Edmonton eventually comes to know one way or another: for the suicidal, the High Level Bridge is the jumping spot of choice. Anderson’s connection to all this, besides being a resident Edmontonian, is that two of his own friends have leapt to their deaths from its height. In spite of its tragic subject matter, The High Level Bridge is not a hopeless film; the point of view feels that of someone with much to live for. Nor is his final act – all too fleeting to absorb as an experience – a voyeuristic exercise; rather, it’s an honest memorial to those who have jumped – and perhaps, too, a small defiance of the High Level’s enduring potential as a facilitator of self-destruction. Director of photography Fish Griwkowsky’s excellently composed frames capture in the bridge and its environs an atmosphere of grim brittleness, evoking the fragility of a human psyche that never fails, whenever looking down from any great height, at least to think about jumping from it.


TREVOR ANDERSON

Trevor Anderson is a self-taught, independent filmmaker. His short films have screened at many international film festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, SXSW, Outfest, AFI Fest and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

At Hot Docs, Anderson won the inaugural Lindalee Tracey Award, presented to “an emerging Canadian filmmaker working with passion, humour, a strong sense of social justice and a personal point of view.” He also plays music in a band, The Wet Secrets, whose song Secret March was named by Grant Lawrence of CBC Radio 3 as one of the Best Songs of the Decade.