Finding A Way To Heal: Frameline Documentary ‘Jeannette’ Puts Focus On Survivor Of Pulse Nightclub Massacre
17.06.2022 - 20:34
/ deadline.com
Jeannette Feliciano is a member of a growing but unenviable club in America: survivors of mass shootings. With every passing week the club expands. Customers of Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York; children in Uvalde, Texas. More than 250 mass shootings have shattered lives in the U.S. this year so far, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Six years ago this week, Feliciano headed to Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, to meet up with friends. It was Latin Night, a joyful weekly event with thumping music. After midnight, an armed man entered the club and opened fire, killing patrons left and right. The death toll would reach 49, with 53 people injured.
Feliciano and dozens of others were trapped inside Pulse as police and the gunman engaged in a three-hour standoff. She escaped after SWAT teams tore open a side of the building. Feliciano says of that terrifying incident, “I live it on an everyday basis.”
News coverage of such events tends to be front-loaded: an immediate convergence of media that eventually wanes, to be reignited for the next shooting. Generally overlooked is the long-term impact on survivors of these devastating incidents. The new documentary Jeannette, directed by Maris Curran, is the rare film to examine how the survivor of a mass shooting tries to deal with trauma and go on living.
“What I’m interested in as a filmmaker is the aftermath. It’s the space that we live in,” Curran explains. “I’m interested in what happens after the news cameras pack up. And I’m interested in a film that is very much in the present tense, that’s less about that specific night… The film is really about that rippling effect. It’s about how, if something like this horrific event touches one person, that actually