9/11: THE FALLING MAN - new documentary - 10pm CBC Newsworld tonight

[Bozita]

First US showing will be in February, 2007.

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyemonday/fallingman/index.html



9/11: THE FALLING MAN

September 11 2001 was a day of many incredible and shocking stories: stories of survivors, stories of heroes. But there was one story that people didn't want to face. The story of the people who began to jump from the World Trade Center just minutes after the first plane hit. Their images were caught on videotape and in photographs, but soon they were never seen again, as if they had never existed.

WATCH A VIDEO EXCERPT
NOTE: Disturbing images, discretion advised

Among those pictures is one of the most unforgettable images from 9/11 – a photograph of a falling man, frozen in mid air, his body perfectly parallel with the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. (see above)

The photo ran in newspapers across the world the following day, and should have remained one of the defining images of that terrible event. Instead, it was erased from history.

CBC Newsworld's The Passionate Eye presents the North American premiere of The Falling Man, the story of the ‘jumpers’ of  9/11. It follows the trail of the photographer who nearly lost his life shooting the image; of the citizens who decried it, arguing that it was sensational and exploitative; of the editors who published it and then reluctantly banned it; and the journalist who finally uncovered the falling man’s identity.

The Falling Man confronts this single, harrowing image and helps history to give a proper due to the jumpers of 9/11.

Produced and directed by Henry Singer.

[magellan]

1. OMG -- on edit, please answer this

Did they show this on US TV? Because I was in the UK, and watched nearly non-stop for days, and NEVER saw this image or any video of such thing. I know it happened, that people jumped, but we weren't shown it.

My god this is horrifying. What kind of people would put together a documentary like this??

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. I was in Lower Manhattan that day, and far more people jumped

than was reported.

Not only did people jump, they were coming off the building in clumps, whole groups jumping or falling off at once. It was a startling and heartbreaking sight, and I saw it with my own eyes.

The US papers and TV showed people jumping one at a time, or, in one picture, two people holding hands. They showed this very briefly, then stopped almost immediately. They never, to my knowledge, showed what I saw, which was big groups of people coming off the top floors of the towers, crowds of jumpers. Awful.

[magellan]

5. I'm so sorry

Yes, we heard about that too. The groups of people. I remember a very wide shot of one instance too. But we just weren't shown up-close pictures like the one advertising this docu -- it's not even a whatever they're pushing it as. It's morbid, ghoulish, in such bad taste.

You must be haunted by what you saw, if my reaction to just that one photo is any indicator. Why do they have to exploit the horror?

[SidDithers]

37. CBC Passionate Eye will not be exploitative...

It will tell a story in a humane and compassionate way, and will re-personalize an event and a day that have been made all too impersonal by those who've used it to advance their own twisted agenda.

Don't horror of the subject matter detract from the importance of the story.

Sid

[LizW]

8. OMG, I never heard that

I have read an actual count of the people who jumped or fell, but I wondered how they could possibly know for sure once the buildings collapsed.

I am almost sure I did see at least one shot of people jumping that morning. It was just a few minutes after I turned on the television. That was the moment when the horror first started to take hold of the rest of us outside New York.

[Connie_Corleone]

12. I watched a documentary a couple of days ago on cable

that showed footage of one man who tried to climb down the building in order to get to the next window below him. He lost his footing and he started falling to his death. It was heartbreaking.

Average people just going to work, making a living and they end up jumping or falling to their deaths.

[Jersey Devil]

25. On 9/11 when Father Bryan Judge died, the FDNY Chaplain,

the media said he died from "falling debris". Actually, initial reports were that he was hit by a falling human body, that fact omitted from later radio and TV reports.

[EFerrari]

41. A woman. I remember that. Poor dears. n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Over 100 people jumped

They seriously underplayed this aspect of the tragedy.

For some reason, watching two buildings fall, killing 3000 people, is "acceptable", but to show people falling (jumping, really) to their deaths is not. The reason, I think, is that a building is not a person. Watching someone who has made the conscious decision to fall rather than to be burned alive involves a lot more vicarious emotional pain.

"What kind of people would put together a documentary like this?" People like you and me.

--p!

[magellan]

10. People like you and me?

You, maybe. Not me. Not if they're using photos like that. Christ.

[rman]

13. Not if they're going to show reality.

Christ.

[magellan]

14. I'm REALLY not in the mood

I don't need to see people falling up close and personal to be horrified by what they went through. Like I don't need to see beheadings to understand the end result and be sickened by it.

If you do, fine. Just back off of me.

[Sydnie]

18. You really should go to the site linked in the OP and watch

the brief clip they provide of the documentary. It will explain just why they are using this photo and what their intent is.

It's a story that should be told. Not looking at it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it easier to lose site of the individual impact. It takes away the "that's just a number" aspect of this tragedy which blivet** and his mouthpieces use when discussing the war casualties. If 9/11 was the catalyst for the Iraq war, then all the "numbers" matter.

I would watch it if I got that channel. I hope they make it available on the net for people like me.

[Jersey Devil]

27. self deleted

x

[Jersey Devil]

22. Actually, it was over 200 according to news reports

USA TODAY estimates that at least 200 people jumped to their deaths that morning, far more than can be seen in the photographs taken that morning. Nearly all were from the north tower, which was hit first and collapsed last. Fewer than a dozen were from the south tower.

The jumping started shortly after the first jet hit at 8:46 a.m. People jumped continuously during the 102 minutes that the north tower stood. Two people jumped as the north tower began to fall at 10:28 a.m., witnesses said.

For those who jumped, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just less than 150 miles per hour — not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but fast enough to ensure instant death on impact. People jumped from all four sides of the north tower. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups.

Most came from the north tower's 101st to 105th floors, where the Cantor Fitzgerald bond firm had offices, and the 106th and 107th floors, where a conference was underway at the Windows on the World restaurant. Others leaped from the 93rd through 100th floor offices of Marsh & McLennan insurance company.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-02-jumper_x.htm

[smirkymonkey]

45. "Not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but

fast enough to ensure instant death upon impact." That statement is just horrifying - imagine those 10 seconds before they hit the ground - what an awful, awful way to go.

To think that our own government most likely had something to do with brings back my outrage all over again. :grr:

[SheilaT]

17. I did not see any images of

those who jumped on 9/11 myself. I think they were shown briefly on some of the channels, but not all of them, and apparently not on anything I was watching while I was watching it. There was one clip, played frequently those days, of a woman crying out loud, saying people are jumping.

In the video shot by the two French film makers who were making a documentary about firefighters (these are they guys who took the film of the first flight hitting the WTC), in the portion shot inside the first building hit, you can hear the peculiar boom of people hitting the ground.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. The sounds are in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

the part where the screen is dark and he just plays the audio.

[AZBlue]

52. You can definitely hear them. That was the part that made me throw up.

eom

[underpants]

21. NO the AMerican networks quickly decided not to show it

the news networks and ABC NBC and CBS collectively decided fairly early on to not show jumpers. I think that Fox (surprise) was the only one that started showing it but then stopped. They also all agreed to share footage so that they were trying to "out scoop" one another on that day or the days that followed.

[Retrograde]

39. the print media did show some of them

I think I saw some of the jumpers on the actual September 11, 2001 broadcasts, but at this far removed I may be confused with various documentaries. My local paper did publish the picture of the falling man the next day. It's among the most horrendous images for me because it plays right into a primal fear of falling.

The people who do need to be reminded of the jumpers, IMHO, are the conspiracy theorists who argue that the fires in the WTC were too small to cause any significant damage.

[petgoat]

56. A person gets hot at 80 degrees C.

Steel doesn't get hot until 300 degrees C.

[Darth_Kitten]

33. I saw this image years ago..........

I'm in Canada........

this is real life and death, yes it's disturbing but what about 9/11 wasn't?

[magellan]

50. Did you watch the beheading videos?

[AZBlue]

51. It was on the front page of the NYT on 9/12.

eom

[annabanana]

2. Broken hearts...

All forgotten in B*sh's allus propoganda world.

[B Calm]

3. How many people have died under Bush's watch?

[meegbear]

6. That image will disturb me for the rest of my life ...

I've seen it a few times and everytime I do, a feeling of horror and dread fills me.

Take Back The Media has a 9/11 timeline clip and it shows that image while Mozart's "Requium" is playing. I wanted at scream in anguish.

[B Calm]

60. Like you I'm disturbed too, but at people not blaming Bush for

letting this happen!! It's an amazing picture.

[hlthe2b]

9. I was horrified seeing this planned coming documentary as well...

But, I read the linked stories. I now agree it is a story that needs to be sensitively told. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated with 911 coverage and what IS and IS NOT heroic with respect to that day. I think it is necessary for us to honor the decisions made by those who had NO OPTIONS but wished only to have some control of their last moments. No matter our hang ups over these decisions-- these people and their families deserve better than to be relegated to the whispered "shame" of history.

[Benhurst]

15. I agree.

How many of us watched The Homeland's "Shock and Awe" attack on Baghdad with its almost-pretty lights of bombs going off here and there, masking the horror of their consequences? There was NO attempt to shield public from seeing that.

But the horror of men, women and children being killed and maimed by such actions are hidden from the public since such reality might harm the war effort.

The picture of the man falling from the World Trade Center brings home the horror of 911, a horror I hope will make the event less acceptable as campaign background material for the very man whose dereliction of duty made it possible.

The horror of war and violence should never be forgotten nor allowed to be glossed over with patriotic zeal. The World's Only Superpower! Is being able to destroy the world fifty-times-over really something of which to be proud?

[yy4me]

11. I wish I never saw this. Before work each day I check DU,

I never expected to have this in my field of vision. Good grief, how horrid, this image has made my skin crawl.Damn *** and his minions. For this, for everything else that has gone wrong under his watch. We know it happened but was it necessary to post? I'm not sure.

[Coexist]

16. Want to hear some Compassionate Conservatism? My fundie Step-mom

said all the jumpers were going straight to hell because they committed suicide. I was so disgusted with her when she said that - I asked her to keep such comments to herself if she wanted to get along at family dinners.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

19. I have this fantasy . . .

of being able to turn a person's life into shit--sort of like the movie Trading Places--and then force them to understand what it must be like for people in those situations. Of course, in my fantasy there is always an epiphany and changed behavior.

I guess that's why it's a fantasy.

And I'm sorry to have to say this: Fuck your step-mom.

[Connie_Corleone]

24. I guess she wanted them to slowly burn to death instead. Jeez.

They were going to die anyway. I'm sure those people would have preferred not to be in a burning building and having to make an awful decision like jumping off of a 100 story building to their deaths.

What goes through a person's mind to say such things??

[raccoon]

36. They're critical, judgemental assholes. nt

[SheilaT]

38. So she thinks people

should hold still to be burned alive, rather than end it quickly. If you can contain yourself, ask her how a loving God would want that. And if she says something to the effect that God doesn't love those who kill themselves, marvel at how God is less loving than you are.

[underpants]

20. Another documentary worth checking out (IMHO)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x233426

[warrior1]

23. That photo next to this

is the true story..

[Wiley50]

35. "Reading Makes A Country Great" on chalkboard behind him

Don't you wish?

[Jersey Devil]

26. A link to the most comprehensive photo archive of 9/11

that I have ever seen:

Here Is New York

[QuettaKid]

28. the videos of people jumping are

all over YouTube.... there are dozens and dozens of them....and I agree. The images SHOULD be shown and not shunted away for our "protection".

[AZBlue]

53. Is that the collection that was in NYC for a while and then traveled some?

eom

[Jersey Devil]

64. yes, it's been exhibited all over the world (nt)

nt

[Rockholm]

29. A Co-Worker Was in London on 9/11...

He brought back all of the London papers when he returned to Boston. The Times of London had totally amazing photos. The one that still haunts me is one of around 50 or so people looking out of smashed windows, smoke wafting around and hanging out of the building. Waiting. That image is so haunting.
The fucking assholes who USE 9/11 as a political tool sicken me. Thousands died horrible deaths that day. AND GEORGE BUSH JUST SAT THERE, NOT WANTING TO UPSET THE CHILDREN.

As I type this, I am boiling in anger and grief and now it is about to be played and used by the right wing and their media appeasers 24/7.

[smirkymonkey]

46. Fucking W is supposed to be in NYC on 9/11 for some kind of

tribute - We HATE the guy with a passion. Not only that, but most of us consider 9/11 to be his biggest failure, but for some reason he still thinks of himself as a fucking hero. :puke:

[Eurobabe]

58. I was in London that day too, and scared witless

had to ride the tube near dinner time to get back to my hotel. The entire London financial district was closed down at the moment the planes hit the towers, who knew what was next.

I do not want to keep reliving that fucking horrible few days every September. Enough already.

[leftchick]

30. I had no idea so many jumped! And they tried to cover it up

damn! They tried to cover up everything about Sept. 11. :(

<snip>

For those who jumped, the fall lasted about ten seconds. The jumpers hit the ground at 240 kilometres a hour. It wasn't fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but ensured instant death on impact.

Witnesses there that day say there was a constant stream of jumpers over the next hour and a half. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups. Most of the jumpers came from the north tower where smoke was particularly dense and where there were more victims concentrated on fewer floors.

Well after 9/11, Tom Junod a writer from Esquire magazine contacted the coroner's office in New York and asked for a count of how many people jumped. He was told that nobody jumped. The official word was that victims were blown out or they were forced out, but nobody jumped. "There were just those things that day that you were supposed to see, you weren't supposed to say and you weren't supposed to talk about."

Now it's estimated that anywhere between 50 and 200 jumped out of the Trade Center that day, although experts believe that the higher number is more likely. If so, nearly 8% of those who died in New York on September 11th died by falling or jumping out of the buildings.

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyemonday/fallingman/jumpers.html

[MiaCulpa]

31. I feel

the same about this photo as I do the war images from Iraq. 9/11 was about the victims. I saw the people jump that day, and I wouldn't want to see photos over and over, but I'd rather risk the chance of running into them from time to time than have them hidden.

The photos just don't disturb me as much as my memory of the entirety of that day, the emotions that came with it. Does that make sense?

[EFerrari]

42. Yes, it does. it took the whole country months to get over that trauma

and some probably never will. And that's without those bastards exploiting the whole experience.

[Bozita]

34. Review from Aussie paper (SMH)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/image-too-horrible-to-bear/2006/08/30/1156816968799.html

An image too horrible to bear

August 31, 2006
Page 1 of 2 | Single page

One filmmaker was inspired to look deeper, writes Paul Kalina.

THE September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States was the most televised event in history. For several days, long after the four hijacked planes had met their ends, television channels across the globe suspended normal programming to bring round-the-clock coverage. Such was the intensity and relentlessness of it that psychologists warned of the potential trauma that exposure to it might cause.

But there was one type of image from that day that was deemed too horrific for public consumption, and remains disturbing on the eve of the fifth anniversary of September 11. It relates to the several hundred people - the exact number is not known and never will be - who jumped or fell from the blasted-out windows of the World Trade Centre.

The most arresting image of those who came to be known as "the jumpers" was taken by Richard Drew of Associated Press. It's one photo from a sequence of 12. In it, a man falls head first, his body in perfect alignment with the shining steel bars of the building behind him. One leg is bent at the knee. There is no sign of the carnage around him.

The following day, many newspapers in the US, The New York Times included, ran the photo. It provoked a public outcry. The photograph of a person seconds from death, people said, was too confronting. Drew's picture vanished. In a mass act of self-censorship, media organisations withheld the image.

But that image, and others depicting people falling to their deaths, has remained etched in the minds of some.

more...

[Bozita]

40. kick for the afternoon shift

[Bozita]

43. 73 minutes to airtime

[Wonk]

44. kick nt

[Bozita]

47. Three minutes

[Sydnie]

48. Damn, I wish I got this channel!

Be sure to come back and let us know how it is, ok?

[Bozita]

49. Nobody's come back.

I don't get Newsworld. I only get CBC.

I saw the word "haunting" in one of the reviews.

Must be.

[Wonk]

59. I saw it. It was as advertised.

Lots of videos and stills of the twin towers burning, falling, and some people jumping. Pretty disturbing. The segment that really jolted me was the journalists mis-identifying The Falling Man and adding extra trauma to the family of the man they'd mis-identified.

[AZBlue]

55. Me too!

If anyone finds a link or another channel replaying it, please let us know that too!

[elare]

61. I recorded it

If anyone knows where I can "park" a 90 minute documentary for others to download, I'll gladly upload it.

[Sydnie]

63. Perhaps you could contact this site and see if they will host it?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Lots of good documentaries there.

[AZBlue]

66. Excellent question. MODS - any ideas? (you're more web-savvy)

I'll look around and see if I can find a place.

[AZBlue]

54. I'd like to see it.

It won't be easy to watch and I'll have a full box of kleenex next to me. But, I'll watch it for the same reason I've watched the other documentaries and films: it does a great disservice to those who died on that day if I ignore it and say I don't want to be bothered by the uncomfortable feelings it will bring up. It could have just as easily been you or me or anyone one of us that was killed that day and we owe it to those victims to remember them, understand what they went through, and keep them in our hearts always.

[blonndee]

57. I remember a documentary

from a few years ago, early on, that was admittedly probably designed to positively spin the conflict/war in Afhganistan, but one scene was very touching.

An American journalist was showing photos of 9/11 from an American magazine to some Afghani men, explaining why the Americans were there. The photos of people jumping made this older man cringe and cover his eyes in (what seemed to me)the same sort of sympathy and horror we Americans felt.

I was so stupid back then. I really thought that "we" could work together to the benefit of both Afghanistan and the US by rooting out those "terrorist freaks."

Still, I remember that old man, and I wonder what he must be thinking now. Just like I remember the footage from a little while later, of a British military official telling an old Iraqi man, "We don't want to occupy your country. We want to give it back to you." I saw in that man's face the expected skepticism, but I also saw a GOOD DEAL of trust, a willingness to believe in what this man was saying. It breaks my heart now, thinking back on how we have lied to them, and how we have let them down. We have let them all down, again.

[WePurrsevere]

62. We were watching one of the many TVs while in Salem, MA & saw jumpers.....

the whole small group that were standing there saw them and in tears. That whole day is burned in my memory... so surreal and yet so very horrifyingly real.

[Rosco T.]

65. I have it TiVo'ed but haven't watched it yet...

I'll do that later tonight

If anyone want's a copy (DVD-R) please PM me and we'll make arrangements.