Tower

Tower (2016) is Keith Maitland's animated documentary, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It reconstructs what unfolded one scorching morning in early August 1966, when a man with a rifle climbed the clock tower above the Austin campus and spent nearly an hour and a half firing down on students and passersby.

Maitland refuses to make the gunman a figure of interest; his name barely registers. The camera — really a hand-drawn rotoscope painted over footage of live actors — stays down on the ground, with the people pinned behind curbs, sprinting across the plaza, dragging the wounded through open fire. A pregnant student lies on the blistering pavement, terrified that any movement will give her away. Officers storm the tower with no real plan. Strangers turn into rescuers. Period radio broadcasts, real survivor interviews, and the animation braid together until that hour and a half in the heat feels almost physical.

This was one of the earliest mass shootings on an American campus, and Maitland tells it through the memory of specific people half a century later, not through statistics. It's a powerful, unexpectedly tender piece — not about a killer, but about those who acted with grace on the worst day of their lives. Stream Tower (2016) online on iFILM.