directors
Youssef Chahine (Egypt)
Amos Gitaï (Israel)
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Mexico)
Shohei Imamura (Japan)
Claude Lelouch (France)
Ken Loach (United Kingdom)
Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran)
Mira Nair (India)
Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso)
Sean Penn (USA)
Danis Tanovic (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
screenwriters
Youssef Chahine (Egypt)
Sabrina Dhawan (India)
Amos Gitaï (Israel)
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Mexico)
Paul Laverty (United Kingdom)
Claude Lelouch (France)
Ken Loach (United Kingdom)
Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran)
Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina-Faso)
Sean Penn (USA)
Marie-Jose Sanselme (Israel)
Danis Tanovic (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Daisuke Tengan (Japan)
Pierre Uytterhoeven (France)
Vladimir Vega (United Kingdom)
producers
Nicolas Mauvernay
Jacques Perrin
cinematographers
Samuel Bayer (USA)
Luc Drion (Burkina-Faso)
Ebrahim Ghafori (Iran)
Pierre-William Glenn (France)
Yoav Kosh (Israel)
Mustafa Mustafic (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Jorge Müller Silva (United Kingdom)
Mohsen Nasr (Egypt)
Masakazu Oka (Japan)
Declan Quinn (India)
Nigel Willoughby (United Kingdom)
music
Michael Brook (USA)
Mohammad Reza Darvishi (Iran)
Alexandre Desplat (title music)
Manu Dibango (Burkina-Faso)
Osvaldo Golijov (Mexico)
Tarô Iwashiro (Japan)
Salif Keita (Burkina-Faso)
Heitor Pereira (USA)
Gustavo Santaolalla (Mexico)
Vladimir Vega (United Kingdom)
editors
Rashida Abdel Salam (Egypt)
Kim Bica (Mexico)
Jay Lash Cassidy (USA)
Robert Duffy (Mexico)
Julia Gregory (Burkina-Faso)
Allyson C. Johnson (India)
Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iran)
Stéphane Mazalaigue (France)
Jonathan Morris (United Kingdom)
Kobi Netanel (Israel)
Hajime Okayasu (Japan)
Monique Rysselinck (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
cast
Maryam Karimi (segment Iran)
Emmanuelle Laborit (segment France)
Jérôme Horry (segment France)
Nour El-Sherif (segment Egypt)
Ahmed Haroun (segment Egypt)
Dzana Pinjo (segment Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Aleksandar Seksan (segment Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Tatjana Sojic (segment Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Lionel Zizréel Guire (segment Burkina-Faso)
René Aimé Bassinga (segment Burkina-Faso)
Lionel Gaël Folikoue (segment Burkina-Faso)
Rodrigue André Idani (segment Burkina-Faso)
Alex Martial Traoré (segment Burkina-Faso)
Vladimir Vega (segment United Kingdom)
Keren Mor (segment Israel)
Liron Levo (segment Israel)
Tomer Russo (segment Israel)
Tanvi Azmi (segment India)
Kapil Bawa (segment India)
Taleb Adlah (segment India)
Ernest Borgnine (segment USA)
Tomorowo Taguchi (segment Japan)
Kumiko Aso (segment Japan)
Akira Emoto (segment Japan)
Mitsuko Baisho (segment Japan)
Tetsuro Tamba (segment Japan)
Ken Ogata (segment Japan)
mpaa rating: none
running
time: 134m
world
release: 9/11/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
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In the months following 9/11,
eleven filmmakers from around the world were asked to make a
short film on the subject. Their limits were a $400,000 budget
and a time constraint of exactly eleven minutes, nine seconds,
and one frame. The result is 11'09"01 (called September
11 in America, where, unlike in many other countries, it
never really got a proper release), an anthology of disparate
takes on the event that scarred a country and scared the rest
of the world. We'll take them individually, in order of appearance.
Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran): We begin with a bucket of water being
hauled laboriously from the bottom of a deep and drying well.
The water is to be used to make mud for bricks, which will be
used to build a shelter in an Iranian village of Afghani refugees.
Why a shelter? Because the adults in the village have heard about
what happened in New York, and they fully expect a nuclear reprisal
from a maddened and not particularly picky America. The children
in the village help with the bricks, completely unaware of the
event; they're more interested in an event closer to home, in
which two men are said to have fallen down a well and died. The
children's teacher (Maryam Karimi) assembles them for class,
and tries to explain to them what has happened. Their innocent
minds can't really grasp it. Eventually the teacher has to take
the kids outside and show them a tall chimney so they can get
some sense of what a "tower" even is. Samira
Makhmalbaf's film is absorbing and has something to say to Americans
who grew up being hyped about the nuclear threat from Russia
-- much as children in other nations are now taught about the
nuclear threat from us.
Claude Lelouch (France): A deaf-mute photographer (Emmanuelle
Laborit) lives in New York with her lover (Jérôme
Horry), a sign-language translator who takes deaf people on tours
through various city landmarks, including the World Trade Center.
One morning they have a little spat and he leaves for work. The
woman agonizes over her laptop, writing a letter to him about
the future of their relationship while the planes slam into the
World Trade Center on TV in the next room -- unheard, of course,
by her. Claude Lelouch keeps us inside the woman's near-soundless
perception for almost the entire film, adding an ominous tone
to what could've been a rather twee story about a couple in crisis
during a much larger crisis.
Youssef Chahine (Egypt):
A film director is
scheduled to discuss his new film at a press conference on September
12. After the event, he can't discuss something so trivial, and
wanders off to encounter the ghosts of a U.S. Marine killed in
Beirut and a Palestinian suicide bomber. There's a bit of rhetoric
about how America has killed many more innocents than were killed
on 9/11, and how civilians in America and Israel are considered
fair game for terrorist attacks because they're democracies and
therefore they voted for the people who make the policies that
tear the Middle East apart. In the end, though, the segment is
concerned with protecting human life everywhere from any political
violence. If that political violence includes our own, well,
look in a mirror and pick up a newspaper.
Danis Tanovic (Bosnia-Herzegovina):
The first of several
pieces in the film to remind American viewers that tragedy didn't
begin on September 11, Danis Tanovic's segment follows a woman
who organizes other female townspeople on the eleventh of each
month to protest the war that took their men away. When news
arrives of the events in New York, many of the women consider
cancelling the protest, but the protagonist insists that not
even this should stop their mission, and in fact, it's more important
now than ever to continue to speak against war. Preachy but well-handled.
Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina-Faso):
This one comes the
closest to entertainment of the eleven shorts, as five West African
boys think they've spotted Osama bin Laden in town and hope to
capture him for the $25 million reward. Think of how much help
for the poor and sick that money could buy! Yes, we do think
of it, and it seems obscene to throw around that much money --
not to mention the billions we've ended up spending in Iraq --
that could help the needy instead, here and abroad. Idrissa Ouedraogo
keeps it all relatively light, though not offensively so.
Ken Loach (United Kingdom):
Vladimir Vega tells
the story of Chile's own Tuesday, September 11 -- the day in
1973 when the democratically elected President Allende was killed
and the vicious dictator Pinochet took over, with help from the
United States of America. Ken Loach lets Vega speak persuasively
and sadly for himself, ending with the hope that Americans will
remember Chile's 9/11 as vividly as Chile, and everyone else,
is expected to remember America's 9/11.
Alejandro González
Iñárritu (Mexico): The
director of Amores Perros
and 21 Grams weighs in with
a scarifying impressionistic piece that unfolds almost entirely
without imagery, aside from strobing video of people jumping
out of the burning Twin Towers. Our ears are assaulted by various
sounds of that day -- terrified cell-phone conversation, explosions,
screams, the thudding of bodies hitting the street, and finally
the towers collapsing. Iñárritu strips the experience
down to what horrified him the most -- the detail of people crazed
with fear and presented with the awful choice of burning to death
or jumping to their deaths. A haunting piece making use of footage
that, perhaps understandably, hasn't been seen much on the networks
since that day.
Amos Gitaï (Israel):
This one seems the
most expendable. It follows, in one unbroken take, the frustrations
of an Israeli TV news reporter trying to cover the aftermath
of a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, and finding herself upstaged
by the events of 9/11. Is this a critique of callous reporters,
or an acknowledgment that in many terrorism-torn areas of the
world 9/11 was seen as just another big-boom story? Whichever
the case, it seems to go on forever with no clear point of view
or, indeed, any point in general.
Mira Nair (India): The director of Monsoon Wedding
and Vanity Fair tells
the true, if stylistically unremarkable, story of a Moslem woman
whose son was wrongly assumed to be a terrorist connected with
9/11. The twist ending gives this piece the shape of a fable,
which would seem sappy if it weren't true. Still, Nair does a
good job of demonstrating the reflexive fear and xenophobia many
Americans exhibited towards anyone who even looked Arabic
in the days following 9/11.
Sean Penn (USA): One of the more memorable yet problematic
segments stars Ernest Borgnine as a widower who still talks to
his dear departed wife. He's upset because there isn't enough
light coming through the window to sustain the flowers she loved.
Then the first tower comes down, and the flowers perk up again.
It's hard to know what Sean Penn is saying with this piece --
he doesn't seem the type, directorially, to burp something so
banal as "Look at the silver lining." In any event,
it benefits from an impassioned performance by Borgnine, who
hadn't enjoyed a role this lovingly actor-centered in years.
Shohei Imamura (Japan):
The last and most intriguing
segment isn't really connected to 9/11 in terms of its events,
but thematically it's all too relevant. After World War II, a
Japanese soldier deranged by the war believes he has become a
snake. He writhes around, darting his tongue out, biting people,
and swallowing a rat. We get the point: War can turn men into
snakes -- or terrorists. Shohei Imamura's explicitly stated message
is "There is no such thing as a holy war." Food for
thought, though probably lost on the thoughtless.
11'09"01 emerges, then, as a sketchbook of
the day, much like the several graphic novels in which dozens
of comics artists and writers contributed their own takes on
the event. Unaccountably buried in this country -- shown at only
a few festivals and then unceremoniously dumped onto home video
-- it's eminently worth seeing, arguing with, and thinking about.
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