Arts & Entertainment

Turning Sandy Devastation Into Art and Awareness

Long Beach photographer Christina Tisi-Kramer submitted her popular video of post-storm snapshots to a local film festival.

When Hurricane Sandy slammed Long Beach in October, Christina Tisi-Kramer and her family lost half of their home to flooding. Even though they had no place to go, they refused to abandon their home.

A professional photographer and creator of the book “Visions of Long Beach,” Tisi-Kramer felt the onus was on her to record the devastation throughout the city, from the crippled boardwalk to ten Canals homes raved by a fire, and hopefully open some eyes beyond the barrier island.  

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“I shot as much as I could but I was boggled down with daily life,” she said about her efforts photographing the battered beach town.  “... Ultimately I ended up with hundreds of images from the storm and they weren't beautiful, so I decided to come up with a creative way to share our experience.”

The result is “Our Time With Hurricane Sandy,” a 14-minute video that is a slide show of her images taken before and after the storm, as well as some colorful images from her book of Long Beach’s better, pre-Sandy days.

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It took Tisi-Kramer about a month to complete the original video that contained more than 700 images and spanned 24 minutes. She posted this version only on her Facebook page and within two months more than 60,000 people watched it.

When City Manager Jack Schnirman asked Tisi-Kramer if he could use her video to raise awareness about the state of post-Sandy Long Beach to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, she obliged.

At the encouragement of people who contacted her to submit her video to the Long Island Film Festival, she followed through but it didn’t make the cut. She said she understands why not.

“I’m a photographer and not a videographer and this was my very first attempt at any video creation, so there are some glitches and bugs, but the content ultimately represents my original intentions well,” she noted.

When Tisi-Kramer learned about the Long Beach International Film Festival, she thought it was a better fit and submitted the original version for consideration. Festival co-founder Ingrid Dodd asked her to edit to 15 minutes, in order for the slideshow to make the “shorts” category.

“It was painful to cut images and songs and keep the same emotion of the piece in tact,” Tisi-Kramer said. “At the same time I got the opportunity to make some much needed improvements.”

Now she awaits the LBIFF’s decision on whether her video will air at the free festival, called “Shorts On The Beach,” which will be held at National Beach outside the Allegria Hotel on Aug. 22.

“I try not to have any expectations,” she said, “but it would really warm my heart to see this played on our beach.”

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