Contrasting perspectives. Tragic crescendos of voices. The irony of American self-pity. Kissinger and Allende. Forced suicide. Protests in blank streets. Familiar thoughts shrouded behind the language barrier.
A movie that is the brainchild of 11 directors, who brought to life 11 visions and 11 points of view - each exactly 11 minutes and 9 seconds long.
Dubbed 11'09'01, this highly unpublicized film premiered Friday at Harkins' Valley Art Theater. The 11 short films endorse the complete freedom of expression. The whole film leaps over political boundaries to communicate one idea: Sept. 11, 2001 was a significant and terrible day throughout the world. 11'09'01 adds a human element to the facts everyone knows and presumes.
The short films express in a handful of languages. They uncork the muted thoughts of nations with a director, a camera and an idea. The films hail from Iran, France, Egypt, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Israel, India, the United States and Japan. Some shorts boast anti-American sentiment. Others drip with sentiment and focus on the Twin Towers destruction. Still more delve into what prompted and surrounded the event.
During some shorts, I dripped a few tears. As others screened, I found myself bobbing for relevance in an ocean of artistic fluff. Some films shimmer through with profound messages. Thus, only some are worthy of written mention. Here they are:
Iran, by Samira Makhmalbaf:
This short aims to depict the relative indifference toward death in Iran. The dialogue is dispersed among sand-kissed children who speak of death as if it is nothing. One says somebody's daddy fell down a well. Just as fast as it was brought up, another reverts the subject to molding mud bricks and shelters.
Although they know nothing of Sept. 11, the children hear of Afghani refugees flooding into Iran. Their schoolteacher spells Sept. 11 out in understandable terms. She first explains what a tower is, using a smoke-puking chimney as an example. Nobody cries.
Egypt, by Youssef Chahine:
Youssef Chahine, an Egyptian movie director tries to film at the World Trade Centers but police force him off the grounds. Annoyed at being kicked off, upset at the Sept. 11 attacks, he returns to Egypt and finds himself visited by ghosts of his thoughts.
The specter of a young American soldier converses with him on the beach, pushing western ideas. Soon after, Chahine interviews Palestinians. They call Bush a "fool" because he decides who all of the terrorists are. Interviews in the film urge that because American citizens select their government, they are responsible for the actions of their country.
Chahine himself does not appear anti-American. Rather, he is the mediator between the conflicting message of the American soldier and the militant Palestinians.
The United Kingdom, by Ken Loach:
Actually, this segment has nothing to do with the United Kingdom. It was just shot there. The camera catches a Chilean exile drafting a letter about Sept. 11 at his London kitchen table.
Crude broadcast clips and gray blasts flicker images reminiscent of World War II. Dictators, genocide, death squads, brick showers from explosions - this was Chile during the 1973 coup of the Salvador Allende's Socialist government.
Right about then my irony-dar went haywire. Surprisingly anti-American, the film illustrates an irony largely ignored about America, Chile and a different Sept. 11.
The Chilean man jots more. At the discretion of president Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the CIA urged a coup. Ironically, the American-influenced coup exploded the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 1973.
Director Ken Loach doesn't stop there. The armchair war warms up when the camera pans to a famous Bush speech.
"Our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts," he said.
Interrupting, the screen snaps back to scenes of oppression and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet. The Chilean asserts that his fellow citizens, his way of life, his very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate attacks on Sept. 11, 1973. America was behind it.
If you thirst for a new perspective on Sept. 11, this is your short.
Mexico:
The Mexico clip surges with sentiment. It sneaks up on you with a crescendo of dissonant Spanish chants. A black screen exorcises images from your brain. The chants crawl over the theater walls, thanks to surround sound.
The screen hiccups an image of a smoking south tower. Another blank screen. A confusion of Hindenburg-esque reporting overwhelms the theater.
The camera satisfies image-starved viewers - only to give them images of those who jumped out of the Towers. There's news footage of suicides: common folk in blue jeans hurling to their deaths.
Showers of violins pour into the music score, the screen returns to blankness. The black picture morphs into gray, then to blinding white.
Amidst clanging dissonance, in written Arabic, the screen asks, "does God's light guide us or blind us?"
The United States, by Sean Penn:
Mexico easily steals the auditory award. Conversely, Sean Penn's United States clip flirts with visual appeal. A super-detailed screen feeds the eyes a picture of a shaving Ernest Borgnine in his Manhattan flat. Penn slows down time. Suddenly, sink water, shaving blades and a rubbery old man's face transform into a symphony of motion.
Borgnine plays the part of a man marooned in senility. Amidst talking to his dead plant, starved of light, or the one-way chats he has with his dead wife's dresses, he waits in ennui.
The screen shows a new scene. Borgnine sprawled out, asleep, with the TV showing the south tower collapse. As it crumples, light beams into his bedroom. His houseplant perks up with lush flowers. Sunlight consumes Borgnines's bedroom. Furled up in one of his wife's gowns, Borgnine sobs.
Meanwhile, the camera zooms out of the apartment window. On the right is Borgnine's sun-saturated window, on the left, a shaded gray wall. After a moment of swelling tension, light pours through the shadow as the north tower collapses. Borgnine pays no attention, too forgone in the magic of the scene.
Uneasiness lingers
If you have ever, even once, pondered what other countries thought of Sept. 11, saunter over to Valley Art. The film challenges the assumption that we know every important side of the story, that we have thought of every possibly and irony of what happened. At times during the showing I attended, the audience froze. During others, they went into uncomfortable shifting frenzies. Nobody was at ease. I'm still affected by the film.
If you go:
11'09'01 runs through Oct. 30 at Valley Art Theater (509 S. Mill Avenue).
Chris Kark is a reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at christopher.kark@asu.edu.