9/11: Press For Truth
http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2006/04/...nheit_911.html
(Gold9472: Someone you guys know helped to make this movie possible.)
by Ray Nowosielski
Directed by Ray Nowosielski, 9/11: Press For Truth is one of those rare creatures in modern media: a Sept. 11 study stripped of politics and partisanship. It’s the anti-Fahrenheit 9/11. No Democrats or Republicans, just ordinary citizens of all stripes trying to find the truth. You don’t need a judgmental overseer to make the infamous “My Pet Goat” incident look bad; the blank look in Bush’s eyes remains bottomless.
The main subjects are the Jersey Girls, a quartet of Sept. 11 widows who relentlessly demanded answers and inquiry from Congress, and Paul Thompson, an Internet researcher who has assembled an enormous archive of news stories, all trying to find answers, to find patterns in the chaos.
Ultimately 9/11: Press For Truth is an information-dense, taut procedural about the real job of journalism and intelligence, not about Deep Throat sources and grand gestures, but sifting through staggering amounts of information to find the connections. It provides no answers, only more questions that remain largely unasked, five years later.
It’s an indictment of intelligence services for their failure to make the connections, the political community for failing to follow up, the media for failing to stick to the crucial stories and, implicitly, of the entire public for failing in its responsibility to hold all of the above to account, for being willing to sit down, shut up and accept the official story.
The film is not without its flaws, including a narration deeply in need of polish and an intrusive soundtrack that swells at all the wrong moments, but these are also flaws Nowosielski is aware of as he works on his final edit. If he works with a sharp and relentless eye, he may not be exaggerating when he speculates it could be one of the most prominent films to ever come out of Indiana.
9/11: Press for Truth is in talks with distributors for wider release; watch this space for future details.
