Georgetown Witnesses "Rebirth," Alumnus' Documentary on Rebuilding Ground Zero
October 12, 2010
Hundreds of members of the Georgetown University community joined director Jim Whitaker (C ’90) on September 30 for a special screening of "Rebirth", a feature-length documentary that follows several people whose lives were intimately affected by the September 11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.
The following day, faculty in the new Film and Media Studies Program hosted a breakfast seminar to discuss the filmmaking process and implications of the artistic choices made by Whitaker and his team in creating the documentary. Associate Dean Bernie Cook described the documentary as “a film about loss, grief, recovery, and return to life.” He explained at the breakfast seminar that the film began with a simple concept. “The original idea was to document the site in the months after the tower fell,” said Cook. “[Whitaker] thought there should be some witness to this space. It began with one camera. As the organization came together, as the resources came through, other cameras were intalled, ultimately 14 in all.” He continued, “the secondary impulse was the need to have to have a human connection” to the event itself and its aftermath.
Rebirth includes time-lapse photography of workers sifting through the debris at Ground Zero, the gradual building of the National 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Towers, as well as in-depth, annual interviews with five individuals impacted by the events of that terrible day. The film doesn’t focus upon the horror of September 11, but instead documents both the personal recovery of the interviewees and the recovery of the Ground Zero site itself.
“As depicted by the film, the site is like an ecosystem recovering after a forest fire,” said Randy Bass, Associate Professor of English and Executive Director of Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). “If you set a time-lapse in a scorched earth part of a forest for seven years after a forest fire, the same thing would happen. First little tendrils, then small animals, and it would become repopulated.”
Whitaker’s vision extends beyond the film. All proceeds earned from the documentary will be used to fund the Project Rebirth Center whose mission is to help professionals and volunteer organizations prepare for, work through, and recover from traumatic experiences. A shorter version of Rebirth, as well as photographs captured by the time-lapse cameras, will be used in the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial. While currently working on a theatrical release for the film, Whitaker and his team are also developing Rebirth in other formats. One possibility is an extended format in which each segment would be devoted to one of Whitaker’s nine original interview subjects with one additional segment focused entirely on the time-lapse photography of Ground Zero.
Georgetown’s connection to the project is extensive. Seven university alums serve on the Board of Directors, including Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia and Chairman Brian Rafferty (C ’79). Furthermore, the Project Rebirth Educational Initiative, which is a collaborative program between CNDLS and Columbia University’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, will use the extensive interview footage collected by the filmmakers to educate people about trauma. And Project Rebirth and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs have explored the use of media for building interreligious and intercultural understanding and have built collaborations between the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum and Georgetown professors who are interested in helping develop narrative and historical context for the museum, and delivering impactful public programming focused on the legacy of 9/11.
Similarly, the College’s Film and Media Studies Program has used Project Rebirth as a tool to encourage discussion about the connection between media and social justice. Students have had the unique opportunity to view and work with unedited footage of Rebirth as well as to document parts of the film’s production and postproduction process. The Film and Media Studies Program will continue to have access to the original interview footage to re-cut and use for educational purposes.
Whitaker said that he could not have made Rebirth without the lessons he learned at Georgetown or without the support of the Georgetown community. “As the filmmaker, I brought the rich perspectives of my Georgetown experience into creating this film,” Whitaker explains. “While each (character) speaks with their own unique and diverse voice, the film … tells the story of the New York City community working to rebuild. The voice of Rebirth, the film, speaks of the resiliency of the human spirit in the face of disaster.”
- Elizabeth Royall, with additional reporting by Joshua Speiser.
Event photos by Yovcho Yovchev; Ground Zero photo courtesy of Project Rebirth.
In the clip below, "Seeing Ground Zero", Whitaker recalls the inspiration behind Project Rebirth. Video courtesy of Georgetown's Witness to History Project / Oral history of Jim Whitaker (C'90).
