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Overcast Bellmore Playhouse premieres Parkland shooting documentary
Long Island victim’s family attends event
“Parkland: Inside Building 12,” a documentary that gives an inside look at the Parkland, Fla., mass shooting from the perspective of dozens of victims, premiered on Monday at the Bellmore Playhouse.
Filmmaker Charlie Minn interviewed dozens of victims who were at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 when a student opened fire, killing 17. Through the interviews and footage from inside the school, Minn focuses on the victims, highlighting the raw emotion that followed the tragedy.
“The country is in peril,” Minn said before Monday’s premiere. “My m.o. is to represent victims. I try to seek justice for victims and honor the innocent.”
Minn said that the shooter, as well as other perpetrators of mass shootings, received too much media attention after the event. In his documentary, the Parkland shooter is not named.
“I am a ‘victim-driven’ filmmaker,” Minn wrote on the website for the documentary. “For the average person who follows the news, ask them to name the Parkland killer, and they will go one-for-one. Then, ask them to name one person shot in Parkland, and they will probably go zero for 34. I am trying to change this entire dialogue.”
The footage obtained by Minn shows what the students and teachers were surrounded by during the event — gunshots, police officers, panicking staff, and students and peers dead on the floor. Student Maddy Wilford seemed like one of those victims, as the footage in the documentary shows her lying on the floor, motionless. She survived three gunshot wounds, however, including one to her right arm.
Wilford and her father, David, recount the experiences and uncertainties of that day in the documentary.
“Do you consider yourself a miracle, that you’re living?” Minn asks.
“Yeah . . . because, just the way the bullets went in me and the way the doctors operated on me and the fact that I stayed in the hospital for a week,” Wilford says. “Definitely a miracle.”
“Yeah, she is a miracle,” her father says, holding back tears.
Wilford also shows her scar from one of her injuries. A bullet entered the back of her arm, traveled to her forearm and “exploded,” she said. She also had a hole in her lung and titanium plates placed in her ribs.
Wilford and her father were two of the survivors, witnesses and family members interviewed for the documentary who were inside Building 12 on the Stoneman Douglas campus that day. One of the victims who did not survive — teacher Scott Beigel — once lived on Long Island.
Partial proceeds from the box office benefited the Scott J. Beigel Memorial Fund, which provides scholarships for children to attend camp. Beigel, who was also a cross-country coach, sacrificed his life to lead students to safety. The night of the premiere included a dinner that Minn and Beigel’s family attended.
“We choose to celebrate Scott’s life instead of mourning his death,” said Linda Beigel Schulman, Scott’s mother. Linda, along with Scott’s father, Michael Schulman, and his uncle, Mark Beigel, chose to enjoy the night with smiles in Scott’s memory.
Minn’s past work has focused on similar tragedies, giving a spotlight to victims. In 2013, he released “The Long Island Rail Road Massacre: 20 Years Later,” focusing on the shooting in 1993 at the Merillon Avenue train station. His 2011 film “A Nightmare in Las Cruces” is about a 1990 shooting in a bowling alley in Las Cruces, N.M. Minn has directed 22 other documentaries.
“Inside Building 12” will run for a minimum of one week at the Bellmore Playhouse, starting on Friday. Partial proceeds from the shows will benefit the Scott J. Beigel Memorial Fund. It will also run in El Paso, Texas, and Coral Springs and Davie, Fla., in October and November.
“We can’t solve the problem unless we talk about it,” Minn said. “Regardless of politics, something has to be done.”
For more information on the documentary, visit www.insidebuilding12.com.
