THE MAKING OF DAVID MODELL'S SHORT FILMS

Irene McMillan, part of the team behind the stories, talks about her experiences meeting people directly affected by gun crime.

These short films about gun crime by David Modell were conceived to show the real effect of street murders on the families and friends of the victims - those whose stories are most often forgotten or missed during the mass reporting of these horrific events.

The intention was not to provide answers to why these crimes are on the increase, it was intended to give a voice to those whose own stories and points of view go unheard; the families and close friends of the victims, those who witness the crimes, those who try to save the lives of others caught up in violent attacks and those lucky enough to survive such attacks.

While families on both sides try to come to terms with their loss, press and politicians descend into a barrage of blame – bad parenting, breakdown of society, single mothers, no discipline or respect for others.

High on the political agenda is what is to be done about teenage violence and what causes it in the first place. Recently, Boris Johnson declared that bad kids should be punished at school as so many are being raised without boundaries, discipline or family structures.

There is too often a sense that these events only happen between dysfunctional and undisciplined young men. This might be true of the attackers, but more often than not the victims are normal children and young adults.

When I first met Vinod, a witness to his closest friend’s murder, he had never really spoken on any emotional level about the night 23-year-old Michael Hanley died. He and Michael had grown up together in Leeds, but their friendship ended when Michael was shot outside a club in Dewsbury on New Year’s Eve in 2005 following a petty argument.

Vinod was lucky to escape that night, but he then found himself being treated as a police witness. They made him sit in a store room, on his own for hours on end waiting to be interviewed and unable to contact his mother. The trauma he suffered as a result of the event; almost being killed and seeing one of the people he loved most in the world murdered, was never acknowledged and went untreated. With the trial taking a long time, Vinod couldn’t continue going to college and found it very difficult to pick up his life and to find work afterwards.

Michael’s older brother, Thomas, has been left devastated by his murder. Plunged into a deep depression, his relationship with his partner and children broke down and he remains intensely angry and bitter about Michael’s death and the men convicted of killing him.

I found Vinod and Thomas through Pat Regan, who ran the Leeds arm of the campaigning group Mothers Against Violence. Pat had set up the group after her son, Danny, was shot on his doorstep six years ago. Pat seemed to have found little in the way of closure - her son’s killer was never found - and she would often have bad days. She was always difficult to get hold of as she devoted every part of every day of her life to campaigning against violent crime; either talking to schoolchildren, at young offender institutes, organising demonstrations or talking to politicians. It had become a huge driving force in her life until she was fatally stabbed by her grandson in June 2008.

There are lots of people who do what Pat did. Most of the groups I spoke to were run by parents, primarily mothers, whose children had died as a result of gun or knife crime.

I went to meetings in town halls where members from campaigning groups would gather and listen to other interested parties – from parents, pastors and youth leaders to reformed gang members who had subsequently found God – all dealing with their own personal agonies by trying to spare others the same experience.

I found the experience of attending these events and meeting these people intensely moving: seeing Tracy Ford, mother of James Smartt-Ford, trying to overcome her grief and find the courage to speak publicly, attending the community commemoration of the first anniversary of Jesse James’ death and spending many meetings and phone calls listening to the pain and bewilderment in voices trying to make sense of the events that have turned their lives upside down in the hope that by making them heard they can make a difference.