SUICIDE FILM SCREENED AT LONDON FESTIVAL

A controversial movie showing real-life suicides is to be screened at a London film festival, despite being met with disapproval across the world. THE BRIDGE, which shows six people jumping from San Francisco's famous Golden Gate Bridge, will be shown at the London Film Festival on Monday (23OCT06). The Bridge was earlier rejected by film festivals at Cannes and Berlin, with one organiser describing it as "voyeuristic, nothing more". Director ERIC STEEL believes the movie forces the audience to rethink their position on mental illness and suicide, and allows them to "bear witness to something profoundly disturbing". The movie has also attracted heavy criticism from suicide experts, who believe it could lead to an increase in similar behaviour as shown on-screen. Professor KEITH HAWTON of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University in the UK says, "All research suggests that showing, in detail, methods of suicide does result in an increase of those methods immediately afterwards, so portrayal of methods of suicide is ill-advised."


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