Reflections on September 11 and its Aftermath Jonathan Rosenbaum November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Like many other Americans lately, I've been scared – but like only some Americans, I've been scared both of Middle Eastern terrorists and those whom I regard as American terrorists, almost in equal measure. For...
On the Interval between Reality and Unreality Benjamin Halligan November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium As a counterpoint to Slavoj Žižek's interpretation of September 11th – the World Trade Centre Twin Towers as symbols of “virtual capitalism” and “the stark separation between the digitised First World and the T...
Just Like a Movie: September 11 and the Terror of Moving Images Bill Schaffer November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium A sulking vagrant arrives in a small American town, equipped with an absurdly large knife and lethal skills gained in the service of the same US military interests by which he now feels betrayed. Harassed by an...
A Reflection Christian Keefe November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium the winds of change begin to move hurts of which, they've come before telling silent sides to mend their ways upset by random effects and sways signs of peace have no place tonight I slap you hard from the...
Watching from a Distance: September 11 as Spectacle Jake Wilson November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium I switched on the TV soon after the planes hit, and there were the twin towers smouldering like giant cigarettes. As I watched this 'live' spectacle unfold from the safe distance of my lounge room in Melbourne,...
Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality – A Symposium the editors November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium The relation between cinema and reality changed on September 11. All distinction between screen fantasy and the crises of history seemed to disappear in a flash. Immediately, people registered the horror they w...
Email from Australian Documentary Filmmaker Tom Zubrycki to Friends, New York, September 18 2001 Tom Zubrycki November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Dear Friends, It's hard to describe the last few days except that they've been traumatic and difficult – yet also strangely life-affirming. Last Tuesday I was having breakfast with my Australian friend Ir...
Reality and Illusion Bernard Hemingway November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium In a recent article published in the Melbourne Age's lifestyle supplement, The Good Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard castigated Steven Spielberg, and by extension the Hollywood Dream Factory, for using cinema to entert...
A Reflection Mark Angeli November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium In Cinema veritas “It was like a scene out of a movie.” Everybody who saw September's* Grand-Guignol show has voiced or thought some variation of those words. Of course it was. Our films reflect us. On t...
A Reflection Stephen Teo November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Has the cinema brought about September 11? Did the terrorists learn their tactics from the action blockbusters of Hollywood? Is the cinema culpable? Such questions presuppose that the cinema can determine or in...
The End of Cinema? Ian Buchanan November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium PROPOSITION: The wound to New York and the wound to cinema are inextricably linked and it is only when New York figures out what it needs to do to heal itself that cinema will be able to do the same. Theodor...
On the Big Set Gabe Klinger November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Following the advice of a few New York City friends and family, I decided to walk from my 34th Street location and into the core of Lower East Manhattan during a recent trip to the Big Apple. Arriving, I fel...
A Reflection David Sterritt and Mikita Brottman November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium One need not be a psychologist or a semiotician to recognize that the destruction of the World Trade Center's arrogant Twin Towers was a symbolic castration, annihilating the world's most widely known symbol of...
A Reflection Dimitri Tsahuridis November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Some 50 days after that tragic day in September, which may come to divide our lives, I feel uncomfortable in speaking openly and honestly about the consequences of and responses to the event. This is an issue w...
A Reflection David Walsh November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Thank you for your invitation to reflect on the September 11 events. Rather than emphasizing – as the American media have done, for example, for their own purposes – how “everything changed” on September 11,...
Mediation and Affect in New York Jonathan Oake November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek – always quick off the mark – wasted no time whatsoever in providing, via the internet, his scattered reflections on the “Attack on America”. Most interesting was his ruminati...
Things are Forever Changed: Business as Usual Michael Levine November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Human beings seem to be put together in such a way that no matter how extensive and ironclad their experience, it is never sufficient to dash their hopes. On the whole, this is of course a fortunate thing. But ...
Cinema as Delphic Oracle Dmetri Kakmi November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium Cinema has been a prophetic medium from its inception. I'm not talking about the drama, musical, comedy, or the Western genres, but horror movies, science fiction, fantasy and thrillers. These genres, which are...
Cinema and Reality Thomas Caldwell November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium “We live inside an enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent reality.” - J.G. B...
Watching Horror: A Gendered Look at Terrorism, or, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Psycho Jane McGonigal November 2001 Terror, Disaster, Cinema and Reality - A Symposium "Oh God, I can't watch!" My boyfriend is used to hearing this protest, during Psycho, Halloween, and countless other horror movies we've seen together. Today, as always, I bury my face in his shoulder, avert...
