{"id":12478,"date":"2021-09-10T06:35:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T13:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12478"},"modified":"2021-09-11T06:38:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-11T13:38:34","slug":"issue-of-the-week-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12478","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: War"},"content":{"rendered":"

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9\/11: One Day in America<\/em>,\u00a0National Geographic TV, 8\/31\/21 through 9\/11\/21<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9\/11. No one needs to say or write more than 9\/11 to explain or know what it was. It changed the world.<\/p>\n

We highlight, out of many programs worth seeing, National Geographic’s six-part series, 9\/11: One Day in America<\/a><\/em>, linked here for streaming, airing starting on August 31st through today and tomorrow, and on-demand through National Geographic TV and Hulu.<\/p>\n

This is the one documentary officially linked to the 9\/11 Memorial and which most comprehensively immerses you in the experience that day through the eyes of the survivors.<\/p>\n

Here’s an introduction in an article in National Geographic,\u00a0Five things to know about new documentary series 9\/11: One Day in America<\/a><\/em>, by Simon Ingram, September 1, 2021:<\/p>\n

Marking the 20th anniversary since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a harrowing new series from National Geographic aims to tell the definitive story of the day the world watched in horror.<\/em><\/p>\n

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TWENTY YEARS AGO this September 11th, as word spread of an incident in New York, people around the world gathered around the nearest TV screen and, for the first time, watched footage that would become infamous. Small huddles of people\u00a0on the street, in bars, schools and building sites\u00a0shared\u00a0disbelief as\u00a0first one, then another aircraft hit each of the\u00a0twin towers of\u00a0New York’s\u00a0World Trade Centre<\/a>.\u00a0And as one, then the\u00a0other tower\u00a0collapsed,\u00a0it became clear what they were\u00a0witnessing was an event of historical magnitude. Whispers of another attack on the Pentagon<\/a>, and of a plane crash somewhere else<\/a>added to the confusion of a day that would change the world.<\/p>\n

The scenes would be replayed endlessly in the coming years:\u00a0the sickening plunge of the planes into the towers, clouds of ash, injured people dressed for the office being hauled arm-in-arm by emergency personnel, and towers of smoke and dust where two of the world’s tallest buildings stood only hours earlier. All would\u00a0make September 11th 2001 the most\u00a0visually notorious\u00a0terror attack in history,\u00a0as well as the most devastating to human life \u2013\u00a0with nearly three thousand lives lost in the buildings, aboard the planes and on the streets.<\/a><\/p>\n

But to those on the ground,\u00a0that day began like any other. And on that day, as the catastrophe unfolded, nobody knew how it would end.<\/p>\n

Like the assassination of President Kennedy<\/a> nearly four decades earlier in 1963, those who witnessed it never forget exactly where they were.\u00a0Daniel Bogado, director of the new National Geographic<\/em> documentary series 9\/11: One Day in America<\/em> <\/a>– produced in association with the 9\/11 Memorial and Museum<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 remembers it well. Recently arrived in London from Paraguay, the 20 year-old\u00a0received a call from a friend. \u201cHe said, turn on your TV, it’s the end of the world,\u201d he told National Geographic UK<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bogado would go on to become an Emmy-winning documentary maker<\/a> \u2013\u00a0a career which included a stint on Channel 4’s Unreported World<\/em>. This latest project\u00a0saw the British-Paraguayan\u00a0tackle a conundrum: how to craft a hard-hitting, original narrative\u00a0from\u00a0one of\u00a0the most\u00a0familiar \u2013 and most reported \u2013 stories in the history of broadcasting.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Here are five things about 9\/11: One Day in America <\/em>that make its depiction of the attack and its aftermath as compelling, and vital, as it’s ever been.<\/p>\n

The camera doesn’t blink<\/h2>\n

With twenty years having passed and countless documentaries already made about 9\/11, how is it possible to offer a new perspective on the tragedy that unfolded under the glare of the world?<\/p>\n

One thing strikingly absent from 9\/11: One Day in America\u00a0<\/em>is reconstruction, over-arching narration or visualisation: the series is entirely archive led, tied together by new interviews with survivors, and\u00a0relatives of the victims of the atrocities of the day. As Bogado recalls, this approach allowed not only the horror to sink in, but also the humanity. \u201cI\u2019d just come from [another]\u00a0series, and the best times\u00a0in the edit were when we were working with archive. The audience know, this is real, this is happening, you\u2019re watching reality.<\/em> But there were elements that were non-archive.\u00a0We had to film visualisations,\u00a0and they were always tricky.\u00a0We’d spend\u00a0months editing, and it was never satisfactory.\u201d<\/p>\n

When approached to direct 9\/11: One Day in America<\/em> – pitched\u00a0by executive producer David Glover<\/a> as ‘finding the most extraordinary stories of September the 11th<\/sup> and telling them as this grand narrative, all led by archive’\u00a0\u2013 Bogado hit the desk first.\u00a0\u201cI watched as many documentaries as I could to see what was already out there. I didn\u2019t see the point of just doing something that had already been done. But I didn\u2019t see anything that was\u00a0like what we were doing. What we were doing was a series, which gave it\u00a0a much wider canvas.\u00a0What it allowed us to do was to play the archive long. We didn\u2019t want to do illustration \u2013 we wanted to do immersive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c\u201dThese people were going to their ordinary life, to their work, and it turned into a warzone between one second and the next. And that is profoundly traumatising.\u201d\u201d<\/h3>\n
DANIEL BOGADO<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It takes a real-time\u00a0approach to chronology<\/h2>\n

\u201cSeptember 11 was an interesting day because technology wasn\u2019t at the same point where people have a video camera on their phone,\u201d says Bogado. \u201cIf something like that happened today \u2013 say the Capitol Hill riot <\/a>– there would be just so many cameras, hours and hours [of footage]. \u201cAt the same time, it was New York City,<\/a> which is probably the media capital of the world.\u00a0There was a mayoral election in the morning, so there were a lot of news crews with proper cameras hanging around, and a documentary crew following [Ladder 1 firehouse]<\/a>…\u00a0. So you had all this footage coming in from all these different sources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certain parts of that footage is\u00a0now infamous \u2013 but instead of offering every angle on key moments, the series takes a more immersive, real-time approach to its edit. \u201cThe terrorists knew that if they burned those buildings in that horrific way, it would be shown all around the world, that\u2019s what they were looking for.\u201d Bogado says. In that sense, the repetition of the moments the planes hit from every angle, or the moments each tower collapsed, perpetuated the terror of the day \u2013 but perhaps also betray the suddenness with which the events transpired under the eyes of New York. Which meant the filmmakers had choices to make to keep the documentary’s\u00a0near real-time narrative cohesive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see the plane hit, you only see it once,\u201d says Bogado.\u00a0\u201cThe second you change the angle, you\u2019re stepping back in time \u2013 and that doesn\u2019t happen in real life. So you lose the sense of immersiveness. That was the approach we took. It really was the amazing work of the editors, an incredibly talented team, to bring all those elements together and make it work seamlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n\"As<\/picture>\n

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It’s for those who said\u00a0\u2018never forget.\u2019 But also those who weren’t there to remember.<\/h2>\n

With twenty years having passed, to\u00a0a whole generation\u00a0the scenes depicted in 9\/11: One Day in America<\/em><\/a> weren’t a memory. Therefore, beyond their ambition to make a landmark series, Bogado\u00a0and his team had\u00a0to tell the story in a way that would educate as well as remind. \u201cWe said \u2018never forget\u2019,<\/a>\u00a0but there’s\u00a0a whole\u00a0generation that wasn’t alive,\u201d he says. \u201cWe found a lot of young people really don\u2019t know a lot about September 11th<\/sup>. So there was an opportunity here to craft a series that was very compelling, and had these moral messages about the way people behaved.\u00a0That really informs\u00a0people about the scale of the horror,\u00a0but also the scale of the humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series was made in collaboration with the 9\/11 Memorial and Museum, which combined with the anniversary and the scope of the series, placed a certain responsibility on the filmmakers. \u201cIt was also a privilege to be trusted with this job. But at the same time you can\u2019t let the pressure overwhelm you,\u201d says Bogado. \u201cOnce you\u2019ve made that promise to a [interview] contributor that you\u2019re going to work very very hard to make this series extraordinary,\u00a0you\u2019ve committed yourself. You\u2019ve got an obligation to them [because] they did their part, they came, they sat down, and relayed for us the worst day of their lives. Everybody on the table wanted to deliver for the contributors and the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Survivors don’t just \u2018get over it.\u2019<\/h2>\n

Who were those contributors? Amongst the archive of video, phone-calls and snatches of radio traffic, the principal narrative thread of the series is provided by new interviews with those who were there on the day \u2013 and have now had two decades to reflect on the experience. And what is immediately clear is that people’s responses to living through the experience vary a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had contributors who told us \u2018I\u2019ve never had a sleepless night, I\u2019m not the type of person who suffers PTSD<\/a>\u2019, to people who told us they rarely leave their house\u00a0[twenty years on] \u2013 and all things in between,\u201d says Bogado.\u00a0\u201cOne of the interesting things that I started asking people\u00a0at the end of their interview, was \u2018do people tell you to \u2018get over it?\u2019\u2019 and almost everyone has, at some stage, told them to get over it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He adds: \u201cI thought, well, anybody who says that, I don\u2019t think they really grasp the scale of the horror of the day \u2013\u00a0what it must have been like to experience that, how absolutely destabilising that is to the core of your soul and your person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been to war zones \u2013 you prepare for weeks or months, and it\u2019s a decision you made to go there. These people were going to their ordinary life, to their work, and it turned into a war zone between one second and the next. And that is profoundly traumatising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amongst the horror, it looks for hope.<\/h2>\n

Chief amongst the motivations for telling the stories of the survivors was to bring to light the acts of heroism, humanity and sacrifice that emerged from the terror of the attacks. \u201cWe had debates about how much of the horror can you show?\u201d says Daniel Bogado.\u00a0\u201cFor me it was important that we don\u2019t sanitise it, that we do show the reality \u2013 that we have a responsibility<\/em>to show the reality \u2013 but to couple that with stories of humanity and heroism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bogado describes the message of hope as being a common thread in his documentary films, which often focus\u00a0on a group of people who are oppressed, or some kind of injustice \u2013 and that in such circumstances, there will always \u2018be people who are helping \u2013 people who are making a difference against extraordinary odds.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Of September 11th he says, \u201cif you just look at those images, all you see is terror, all you see is fear, civilians running for their lives.\u00a0But then if you do the work we tried to do in this documentary, and you see the person being put in the ambulance\u00a0\u2013 who are these people, who did they help, what happened to them later\u2026 it adds another layer which you might have been unaware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bogado adds: \u201cYour first obligation as a filmmaker is to the truth, whatever that may be. And I think it\u2019s quite inspiring that at the time like that, people really came together. And the stories really prove that.\u201d<\/p>\n

9\/11: One Day in America premieres on the National Geographic Channel on August 31<\/a>\u00a0at 9pm.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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9\/11: One Day in America,\u00a0National Geographic TV, 8\/31\/21 through 9\/11\/21   Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9\/11. No one needs to say or write more than 9\/11 to explain or know what it was. It changed the world. We highlight, out of many programs worth seeing, National Geographic’s six-part series, 9\/11: One Day in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12478"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12501,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478\/revisions\/12501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}