Interview with Alejandro González Iñárritu about 11’ 09” 01 - SEPTEMBER 11

Where were you on September 11 2001? What did you feel when you learnt about these events? - I had been in Los Angeles for 4 days, after having arrived to start my next film project. Paradoxically, I was searching for security for my family after having lived in Mexico City, which has become a tough and unsafe place to raise kids. Ironically, we were received by the terrorists. My Mexican assistant called me early in the morning and I watched as everything was happening live. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t tear myself away from the TV for two days. You are a very busy film-director. Yet you did not hesitate to answer this invitation: joining in a collective work based around the events of September 11 in New York by making one of the 11 shorts. Why? - In truth, I was reluctant to accept the project at first because the magnitude and complexity of this event were so great that I felt I lacked the necessary distance to talk about it. The number of angles from which to approach it was infinite and I felt that any fictional treatment would be too slight, too superficial. Later, however, I realized that rather than a political or philosophical stance, it was an opportunity to express and to exorcise, alongside an incredible collection of directors, the fear, the darkness and the sorrow I lived and felt on that day. Had you thought of expressing yourself around the events of September 11 before being asked to participate in '11’09’’01'? - I had so many mixed feelings during the days surrounding September 11 that I needed to throw up my emotions doing something. So I took some still photographs that were banned by an American magazine because they were too politically incorrect for that moment. I felt angry, frustrated and disappointed. I was only trying to point out the dangers, injustices, and tragic consequences of what was going on in Afghanistan... the strange nationalism that has been reborn in this country. I called the series of photographs 'Blinded by the Light.' As you can see, what I did with this short film points in the same direction: the sun can guide you, but if you look at it too much, it burns and blinds your eyes. What events or personal experiences did you want to bring to light through your short? What personal echo to the events of September 11? - I wanted to express that this event is beyond politics; that it has more to do with the dark side of our nature. It has more to do with Cain and Abel than with Bush and Osama. This is a problem of human beings projecting themselves, their fears and desires, through a God that has been deformed for their own convenience, and using him to justify their actions. This is something that is happening in the east and the west. It is about the emotional spirituality, the fanaticism, the fundamentalism, the nationalism and the misinterpretation that man has made of God’s light. That of which, more than illuminates, blinds peoples’ reason. I wanted to explore the human suffering of this specific day, rather than losing myself in 11 minutes of political gibberish and rhetoric. If you review the terminology of Bush’s speeches and Osama’s messages, it is scary because beyond reasonable fact, they were talking about good, evil and God, all of which are very vulnerable and subjective matters. So the question at the end is for both sides of the world. How did the idea of your film come to you? Immediately or after long consideration? - I conceived this short film as a communal experience: a collective prayer with the Chamulas Indians from my country for those innocent people who died that day. These prayers from the people of Chiapas work as a mantra, and I have used them as a present from me and my country to help heal the wounds of that painful day. This offering is not only for the American people, but for humanity itself, for the event that took place, and for what has happened after that event. The Chamulas believe that you arrive to the light after a dark and painful process, but only if you are able to see and confront reality. I woke up at 3:00 am one morning in my dark room, and I saw black everywhere. That was it. It was the same vision and feeling that I had of September 11. The only image that I used was the people falling as a metaphorical representation of Icarus. It was not only this man but all of us who were falling. I put the tower collapsing as a metaphorical representation of the Tower of Babel in which everyone speaks a different language and no one can communicate with each other, thus, the collapse of a romantic idea of global civilization. I thought that on that day, reality killed fiction. The story and the images have already been told and exposed a thousand times to everybody, so as a fiction maker, humbly, I took one step back and tried to make 11 minutes of visual silence as a tribute, with the colors of death and grief represented by black and hope and healing represented by white. I think the sound, the silence and the music, even when it is just one half of cinema, is more powerful and goes beyond the physical experience. The sound and music soar while the images are more banal. This film is the antithesis of silent cinema. Has the time constraint of 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame, imposed on every short, caused difficulties when constructing your story. How did you deal with it? - Instead of creating and delivering an answer to the audience through a short story, I chose to confront people with their own images, their own fears and feelings about what had happened, allowing them to experience catharsis, and paradoxically, the only way to do it was without images. So the challenge for me as a filmmaker was to tell a story and create an emotion with only my left arm. This was the real challenge that I had, more so than the time constraint. I used two colors and hundreds of different real and frightening sounds from all over the world from that day to tell something that had already been told. It was a very abstract and completely inverse process from making a regular short film. A short film is always more difficult than a feature, but this one was worse. How did the actors and the technicians make and experience their contributions to the film? How did the shooting progress? - No actors, no camera, no crew, no script, no nothing... my musical instinct and the memory of that man, dressed in red, falling from the World Trade Center towers were enough to guide me on this painful journey. He was my inspiration because I always wondered what this man was thinking as he was falling. I put the people falling as a metaphorical image of us: humankind falling as Icarus. I did not think my point-of-view was important, and I wanted to put myself and the audience in the shoes of those who were inside those buildings, waiting for the unpredictable. In a dark theatre, everything that will happen is as unpredictable as it was on that day. I lived under the schizophrenic messages of the media in the United States, which in some way, acted as another kind of terrorist, creating terror for those people who were watching and listening. That is why I constructed this piece as a trailer, but the horror is that this is not about a Schwarzenegger film. This is real, a trailer of our lives, and all of the sounds are real, but during the days following Sept. 11th, the media was selling the event with characters and heroes. That is why I did not use a rational narrative. I constructed this piece the way that I remembered it. The nightmare was to get the release and the rights to use more than 60 pieces of audio. At the same time, working again with Gustavo Santaolalla, Anibal Kerpel, Martin Hernandez, and for the first time, Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet, made this experience worthwhile and complete. Each director has built up his or her film without having the slightest inkling of what the others would do. Has this been a problem for you? How have you experienced or 'lived' this collective work? - My only problem or fear was how a black and white abstract painting would look in a space that might be in a Renaissance museum. I did not know at all the context in which my short film would be played, but after all, not knowing anything about the others, that ignorance, in some way freed me of my own fear. In your view, can the film bring new perspectives to a reflection on our contemporary world? Can cinema function as an instrument for peace? - I hope so, but unfortunately bureaucrats, politicians and people who hold the power do not go to this kind of film. On the contrary, I would say that most of the movies being produced in the world today reflect our current situation, which is in some ways pathetic. Do you think that the events of September 11 will influence your future films? - I think so. I don’t know how, but obviously the perception of the world and the future of human life and behavior have been and will be altered by September 11, and this change in peoples’ lives is the source for any film maker. Do you think there exists a 'before' and an 'after' September 11, such events constituting a rupture in contemporary history? - This romantic idea about globalization, about the world as a little village, will be completely different after this. I think that on the surface, it seems that the world should go in that direction in order to survive, but in the undercurrent, people seem to be returning to their own cultures, traditions, languages and races. A new kind of racism, the fear of others and nationalism is born.

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