Has anyone else seen this anthology film (I believe it’s been mentioned elsewhere). 11 short films from an international group of directors. Why do I feel that the collection is a failure, albeit an interesting one. Part of the problem lies in the idea of an “international” perspective on the event I think. Is there such a thing? How is it distinguished from an American perspective. This post derives from the thoughtful commentary provided by Gio at our books site and my somewhat less thoughtful response, claiming that Americans understand 911 in a different way than most of the world. Thoughts? Is the event “ours” not “theirs?” If you’ve seen it, any thoughts on individual segments?
thanks for bringing this up here, michael. these, as you know, are issues that keep my mind busy. i am going to start assigning the segments to my class, a couple at a time, see what they have to say. as always, i will have a lot more to say after i discuss the segments with my students. class focuses me. i can’t get the one about the deaf french woman out of my head, though. just wish the boyfriend hadn’t come back — don’t know why. i also liked the sean pean one. do you have a favorite?
Hey–where did you guys get this? I was trying to buy it, and I can’t seen an American-released version available?
I own a copy Mike and it is region 1.
I think Ken Loach’s documentary works very well. My students were quite upset that American foreign policy could in any way be compared to the acts of al quaeda and the destruction of the World Trade Center. I also like the Isreali film that depicts, in one take, a suicide bombing that took place on 9/11. It is a cocaphany of sound and vision but it works. Taken as a whole, however, I feel the film is less appealing. I didn’t like Sean Penn’s film. I can’t really remember any of the others specifically. Mira Nair did one, yes?
Gio–my favorite is the French film, the one you mention (claude lelouch)–I think it’s the most successful in terms of its narrative. I also think the Ken Loach piece is very successful as a polemic. I’m surprised to hear about your class, Jeff–I tried to get my students riled up for a vigorous debate but they seemed to have no trouble agreeing that the U.S. supported coup in Chile was an act of terrorism….my students do not seem to respect the pieties of 911. yes, Mira Nair does one of the shorts, about a student who is suspected of being a terrorist but turns out to be a hero.
Mike–the film is out of print but I found a used copy on Amazon.
i got my library to order it, so it can’t be out of print, can it?
This film is interesting from a materialist perspective as well, yes? It played at the Venice Film Festival in September 2002 and got a lot of interesting press (Sean Penn was singled out I remember) but distributors wouldn’t touch it and I think it got a half-assed release in the States about a year later (but mostly it was a straight to video affair unless you lived in NYC). It was read as being self-righteous and the idea that the destruction of the World Trade Center could be appropriated and contextualized through a multi-global gaze was problematic. Plus, some of the shorts (the Japanese one as I recall) are quite oblique as if the events of 9/11 were too powerful for high modernist readings. Anyway, that’s my two cents.
though the film is out of print, new copies are still available at many sellers. I think for the most part the shorts manage to avoid a sense of “self-righteousness”–in fact in something like the Loach piece the impulse to take the event self-righteously is explicitly blocked. But something in the collection just doesn’t work…I can’t quite understand it. Every event gets appropriated and contextualized so I don’t think much of that objection–however, perhaps it could have been appropriated in ways other than art-house self-containment or populist heroics (United 93, World Trade Center). something like a Rossellini piece on the order of Germany Year Zero ?
By the way, what exactly does multi-global mean? Who wrote that?!?