Educational Media Reviews Online

This short documentary film presents a little seen, refreshingly a political perspective on the events of 9/11. It is simply the description of the havoc wreaked on a neighborhood. The film is a series of short interviews with local people, interspersed with Peterson’s description of home life in the weeks and months following the WTC attacks.

The filmmaker and her husband live and work in their apartment a few blocks from the WTC site, and were forced to evacuate their home for several weeks. When they returned, their apartment was coated with the dust and ashes form the collapse, and their neighborhood was barely existent. Many stores, restaurants, and delis had been forced to close, and although vast quantities of government aid had been pledged to help victims of the disaster, there seemed to be no clear process for obtaining relief, and no speedy response to immediate problems faced by the small businessmen who worked in the area.

71 West Broadway is well produced, with sharp images and good sound, (with the exception of the disturbingly jaunty electro-pop background/filler music) and the hand- held camera gives the exercise a feeling of immediacy, and recalls the feeling of those weeks very vividly. Unfortunately its brevity is both frustrating and tantalizing. It would be very interesting to see how some of the individuals interviewed are faring a year later, or to know what the result were of all the town meetings and interactions with the bureaucracy that was managing the disaster relief funds.

It does not add to our understanding of the events of Sept 11, 2001, but it does provide a glimpse of the very real and not very glamorous repercussions and consequences that the attacks had for ordinary people in New York City. Unfortunately the film is too short and too expensive to warrant a wholehearted recommendation, but it is recommended for those who feel they have more than enough news footage of the events and are looking for a more human aspect to the disaster.

Awards/Festivals: Wisconsin International Film Festival, 2002; Women with Vision, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis