I missed television that morning, and that whole day. When I finally got to a television, in the common room of my freshman year dorm, I may have listlessly watched talking heads explain the images I had already seen on the web and heard about from classmates, from my family, when I could finally reach them by phone. I can't be sure how my experience of that day would have been different if it had been spent glued to the television, a pastime that I've learned is less helpful for understanding the news than it is for understanding the tedious necessities of 24 hour news coverage.But however the facts of the attack sank in for me that day, it took me months to more fully digest what had happened. Months, that is, and a well-made documentary film, "9/11," produced by the Naudets, a pair of French brothers who just happened to be making a documentary during the summer of 2001, about a rookie firefighter based at a firehouse not far from the World Trade Center.It was during an early morning gas leak inspection, just blocks away, that one of the brothers happened to capture some of the only clear footage of the first airplane smashing into the south tower. They kept shooting, one brother following the firemen down to the site, where glass shards were scattered about, and bodies were starting to fall, the other brother staying at the firehouse with the rookie, holding down the fort throughout the nerve-wracking morning.In the terrible chaos that ensued, a pair of filmmaker brothers trying to capture the events—and to survive and find each other again—was the hook that finally hit me hard, in the head and the chest.Part 1 of "9/11," by the Naudet Brothers.
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