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Texans Recall Early Word of Mass Shooting in a Chilling Clip from the Animated Documentary 'Tower' (Exclusive)


Director Keith Maitland uses rotoscope animation to recreate the events of Aug. 1, 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin in the new documentary Tower, but the technique doesn’t make the telling of America’s first mass school shooting any easier to digest.

You can get a sense for the film’s distinctive style in the exclusive clip above. The sequence follows the first-hand accounts of several witnesses, including a police officer, journalist, and student, who recall the initial moments of what would become a 96-minute standoff.

Architectural engineering student Charles Joseph Whitman murdered his wife and mother before he climbed the campus’s famous Main Building (also known as The Tower) and went on a shooting spree. All told, the gunman shot 49 people and left 18 dead, including an unborn child and man who died in 2001 from complications from the wound.

Tower premiered at the 2016 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, where it won both the Audience and Grand Jury award for Best Documentary Feature.

Executive produced by talk-show host Meredith Vieira and actor Luke Wilson, Tower is now playing in New York and Los Angeles and will expand to more cities in the weeks to come.