Memories From Ground Zero: An Intimate View of the Sky Falling Down

Rory Duffy’s Memories From Ground Zero is a 31-minute 9/11 documentary that, exactly as the title indicates, is about the recollections of a firefighter and a CBS journalist who were eyewitnesses as the towers collapsed on NYC. Interwoven with official archival footage and photographs are also personal recordings—small histories that add texture to the larger narrative.

The film is divided into two formal sequences, “The Fireman” and “The Journalist”. Bookending them are clips of the carnage, some from news broadcast, others from people present at the scene. The shock of seeing the planes penetrate the towers—even if a little dulled after years of watching unspeakable violence on various screens—is a powerful thing. It is something the film relies on when foregoing a voiceover narration. It segues from that peak to a quieter present, containing in that lull the sense of both distance and reflection.

Brad Hores, FDNY 298, Ladder 127, was not meant to be near the towers. An injury had kept him off-duty, but the cloud of smoke pulled him in. That image, of black, billowing smoke off the top of a skyscraper, is one of those things, like the mushroom cloud in Nagasaki, that becomes imprinted and immortalised in the collective memory. It returns over and over, a haunting memory seen from several different vantage points, a ubiquitous nightmare of dust, ash, and death. Later, the film will also show the distant silhouettes of people against the brilliant sky, jumping or falling to their deaths.

Former CBS producer Tom Flynn features as the journalist. Like Hores, he too, chose to show up. This sequence, the longer of the two, also includes Eddie Remy, a cameraman for Merrill Lynch, whom Flynn ropes in to capture footage. The most interesting part of this sequence, and for that matter the entire narrative’s, is a minute-long clip, previously unseen, from Eddie’s camera as he runs into a convenience store for cover. There is very little light, people are scrambling to turn off the gas, stifling screams, while outside the South Tower is coming down. It is the closest we come in the documentary to the bare despair of people.

An animated sequence parallels Eddie’s time at the store: Tom’s escape into a parking garage. Stylised, more controlled, it reaches for a representation of the refugees’ fear and panic rather than a purely objective report. Here on, the film shifts definitively into a more deliberately emotional sequence.

As the United States reckons with the trauma of the attacks and regions the world over grapples with recurrent, ongoing military violence, Memories From Ground Zero serves to show up close how the wound might close, but not only does the pain stay, it multiplies. When twenty-five years have not been long enough for Americans to see the last of the consequences—many still suffer and will die from the terrible impact their bodies took over the following days and months—you wonder about those facing the bombs and the guns today. How long it will be before they can rest easy.

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