The film Tower is the last film to be shown in the documentary films competition. It tells the story of the tragedy that hit Austin, the capital city of Texas, one hot summer day in 1966. The filmmakers, headed by director Keith Maitland, combined archive materials with animation and the testimonies of witnesses to reconstruct the course of the first school massacre in the United States to be covered by the media.
An unknown shooter occupies the top floor of the clock tower of the university campus and begins to shoot passers-by. This triggers 90 minutes of panic. The audience sees the whole story through the eyes of students, police officers and reporters. “I wanted to retell the story from the perspective of the people who were there. Each word in the film was actually said. Eye-witnesses, some of whom are about seventy years old today, went back in time to when they were twenty, so that even today’s young people can relate to the film,” explains the director. He also clarified why he used animation to bring to life an event that happened fifty years ago. According to him, it helped him overcome time and space and sketch out the characters in connection with archive recordings, using every second of the available 14-minute footage.
The filmmakers purposefully avoided the attacker’s story, who managed to kill sixteen people before being captured at the very top of the tower. “Only he himself knew his motives. And for me, the reasons weren’t that important. Today, I say to myself in connection with political terrorist attacks that when you are waiting at a bus stop and a bus blows up, you won’t be thinking about the political or religious reasons, you will just be bleeding,” added Maitland.
Well-known actor Luke Wilson also helped fund the film as he grew up hearing stories abut the massacre. He came with the offer to help the director himself. Half of the budget was spent on the 18 months of work of 18 graphic artists. Maitland himself spent a whole decade working on the project. But he doesn’t regret it: “Although the topic was something extremely serious, it was a gift for me. Some of the witnesses admitted that they had long kept silent about the tragedy and that the interview with me helped them come to terms with everything. This helped offset all the pain and darkness.”
