8:48 am. That one minute, when the first hijacked plane exploded into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, flashed across television screens around the world. The three digits became a permanent fixture of around-the-clock news coverage, engraving it into history and the subconscious of peoples’ minds worldwide.
It was over coffee and rapid-fire conversation with a writer friend in New York that Ian Thomas McLean came up with the idea to draw on peoples’ responses to the event in an ambitious film project.
The result is One World One Minute, a feature film project marketed entirely over the internet, attracting hundreds of photography, audio and video recording submissions from around the globe.
McLean, a writer and experimental filmmaker based near Glasgow, along with five other media types decided to launch a project to enable people to record one minute of their lives, one year to the day, at 12.48 GMT – the corresponding time in the UK when the first plane struck the twin towers.
The project welcomed any type of artistic expression; an audio or visual recording, drawing, photography, however the individual wanted to capture one minute, at 12.48 GMT on September 11, 2002.
The results will be drawn together in a feature-length film the One World One Minute team hope to screen at international festivals in 2003.
Contributors were asked to forward their submissions within six weeks of September 11, but already, responses have been flooding in, McLean says.
Initially, about 80 submissions, mainly photography, were received digitally on the day.
Since then, a further 200 or so projects from around the globe have landed on McLean’s doorstep.
‘Every day we are being amazed and surprised by the submissions. Right now, there are 12 unopened packages that arrived today and I have no idea what they will contain,’ McLean says.
The content, McLean says, has been as overwhelming as the number of responses.
The first recorded submission One World One Minute received was from a group of miners in the UK, recording down in the mine shaft where they work.
But the most emotive for McLean was an audio recording from an older woman in Israel.
‘She was of retirement age and she was going through all the dates in her life that have really crushed her,’ he recalls.
‘The first thing she mentioned was in 1934. She was a four year old Jewish girl on her way to the synagogue. It was Berlin, and she can still remember the sight of her synagogue in flames.
‘Then it jumped to 1938, fleeing to America, being in Chicago for the end of the second World War, being in the Cuban Missile Crisis, then her experience in a supermarket, hearing over the tannoy that Kennedy had been shot,’ McLean continues.
‘She ends her piece with the twin towers attacks. She was living in Israel, her kids were still living in America, so she flew back immediately. Now, one year on, her final message is simple, “I have no
more tears left to shed”.’
For a project marketed solely over the internet, it seems unusual for the concept to have reached a pensioner in Israel. But according to McLean, submissions have been received from people who have never seen the website, but simply heard about the project through word of mouth.
With the six-week deadline for submissions looming, the Scotland-based team, a diverse group from Scotland, England, Greece and South Africa, face a long and daunting editing process. For McLean, the challenge posed by the cross-media submissions will be the biggest hurdle.
But I wonder how difficult it will be for the group to get the project screened at international film festivals?
‘The entire point of this is from an artistic point of view, not a commercial point at all,’ McLean emphasises.
‘I don’t think it’s going to be difficult to get it into the festivals, what is going to be difficult is the editing process, trying to form a narrative from a complete montage of diverse materials,’ he explains.
‘The only word that suits is diversity. The film shall investigate and celebrate diversity, but also look at how sometimes, diversity can lead to misunderstandings, resentment and conflict,’ he continues.
The other question nagging at me is: How true to the project brief were participants? Did the submissions really capture one minute, at 12.48 GMT on September 11, 2002 – and does it matter?
‘I don’t think the people that chose to participate would be cynical about this,’ McLean comments. ‘I don’t think there would be much cheating go on.’
McLean and the other five members of One World One Minute; Christos Ropokis, Evdoxia Viza, Tom Caddell, Helaina Cummings and Fiona McLean are a multi-talented bunch of writers, musicians, editors, special effects experts and technical engineers. They also participated in the project, individually.
‘I went away and filmed my mum,’ McLean says emphatically. ‘I’ve made loads of things, and she’s never been in them. I thought it was about time.’
For more information on One World One Minute, visit their website, www.oneworldoneminute.com