The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Stamford filmmaker captured the events of 9/11
Jules Naudet carries vivid memories of 9/11, and the images he captured on film on that morning two decades ago created their own visual memories and riveted the nation.
He and his brother, Gedeon, documented the horrific and searing moments of Sept. 11, 2001, when a short film they were making about a probationary firefighter learning the trade in lower Manhattan turned into something far, far bigger.
Jules Naudet, a longtime Stamford resident who has since completed a number of documentaries on terrorism and national security issues with his brother, captured the moment when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center.
At the time, the two filmmakers originally from France were following Tony Benetatos, “The Kid” as they referred to him in the documentary “9/11.” His shift was about to end when his engine company was sent out on a report of a smell of gas in the neighborhood near the twin towers, which was a routine matter for the New York City Fire Department.
Jules Naudet’s odyssey began with a routine fire call and ended up with the most compelling visual narrative of that terrible day, combining horror, death, heroism and seemingly inexplicable twists of fate that spared some lives and claimed others. He and his brother were nearly killed but survived.
“That day, seconds and inches were the difference between life and death,” recalled Naudet, a native of France who has become a U.S. citizen.
Naudet was shadowing Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer when they heard and saw a plane flying low in the clear blue sky, as they waited to resolve a minor gas leak in the neighborhood.
“At 8:46, as I’m filming firefighters milling around a street corner, I see a loud plane, not that unusual, but this one felt a little off. I saw it passing between two buildings, an American Airlines jet, I can see it on the tail, the logo,” Naudet recalled.
“Low to the ground, going fast, it disappears behind a building. And reflex, I don’t know, I turn the camera to see where it was going to appear. That’s where I filmed the plane crashing into the north tower,” he said.
“That’s where I discovered that time can become very elastic. The moment lasted for about, oh, six seconds. But in my head, I have an interior monologue, that lasts minutes,” Naudet said.
He and the fire chief raced to the World Trade Center. As they entered the lobby of the north tower, Naudet was confronted by the first of many grisly images. “My first horrible visual of the day — two people burning alive. Death happening in front of me.”
Not long after, the young French filmmaker, who came to New York City as a teenager, heard a terrible explosion, and word came in that the south tower had been hit, too.
“This is no longer an accident, this is an attack. So, the stress starts going up,” Naudet remembered. “World War III, it was kind of pandemonium at that point . ... The stress reached a crescendo when we hear a series of explosions, almost.
“A firefighter said, ‘we’ve got jumpers.’ Not realizing what he meant, I got closer to the window,” Naudet said. “Unfortunately, I realized it’s people jumping. It’s incredibly difficult, intellectually, to realize, that sound is a person’s life that has just ended. … And this would be nonstop, it would be again and again and again.”
Naudet can still recall the looks on the faces of the FDNY personnel as they tried to make sense of the worst catastrophe of their working lives, which is captured in the documentary.
“I never saw fear on their
“THAT DAY, SECONDS AND INCHES WERE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.”
JULES NAUDET
faces, even though it would have been justified. It was more concern. It’s that strange thing with them, firefighters — they cannot stand not helping people,” Naudet said. “All they want is to go up, and the frustration is: They have no elevators, and they know people are dying because of the smoke and the fire.”
As the FDNY made plans to attack the fire and rescue civilians, Naudet heard another sound he will never forget, the collapse of the south tower.
“We hear that horrible roar, that I can only describe as a freight train of death that comes to get us,” he recalled, and his legs almost involuntarily started to run.
“As I’m running, I can feel the ground shaking, day turns into night, for some reason,” he said. “Again, time become elastic, almost in slow motion. I remember sitting down, waiting for death. It was very Zen-like, I was very accepting. Thinking about all the people I love. We don’t recognize the landscape, which has turned into a kind of post-apocalyptic winter.”
Jules Naudet survived the collapse, but the disasters around him continued to unfold, as the north tower began its own descent into destruction a short time later.
“We hear that horrible sound again, I look up and I see the [north] tower is collapsing on top of us, mushrooming down toward us,” he said. For protection, he lay down between two trucks, then felt another body lie down on top of him — it was Chief Pfeifer.
“He jumped onto to protect me with his bunker gear, his helmet. He would get lightly hurt by debris, but saved me. I owe him a debt I can never pay back,” Naudet said of the fire chief.
By this point, Naudet assumed that his brother had also responded to the scene and been killed in the collapse of one of the towers — and he was correct to believe Gedeon was in danger.
Gedeon Naudet had made his way to the disaster scene to film, shortly before the second tower collapsed. “He jumped into a firetruck, fortunately the front and not the back, because the back was crushed,” Jules Naudet said of his brother. “He survived. He was with an FBI agent, they survived. In the back, two firefighters were killed, because debris fell right there.”
Jules Naudet also worked on the recovery operations on the ruins of the World Trade Center, in what was known as “The Pile.”
“For me, the worst was probably in the days and weeks after. On Sept. 11, as you’re running for life, every cell in your body tells you that you’re alive,” the filmmaker said. “When you’re on The Pile, and you’re digging, you have time to think. The oncoming depression and trauma is a horrible spiral; it’s slowly trying to drag you down. So doing the documentary was kind of our way to transform what we’d seen, the worst of humanity, terrorism, to concentrate and hold onto the best of human nature ... the firefighters, of course, but also the civilians, complete strangers, helping each other. That wave of solidarity and resilience, it kept the depression at bay . ... The best of human nature comes out of these moments.”
Naudet said the experiences from Sept. 11 and afterward have made him realize “everything can change, at any moment, anything can end.” So he and his fiancee, Jacqueline, decided not to put off their wedding any longer. They got married on June 1, 2002, and the FDNY was pleased to host the affair at the firehouse for Engine 7, Ladder 1.
“They built an altar, put out chairs,” Naudet recalled. “It was the most incredible moment, ever, for all of us.”
The couple has since raised two children in Stamford, where Jules Naudet has lived since 2004.
The date of 9/11 also leaves him with a sense of awe, and even inspiration. Looking back on that day, the filmmaker said, “For me it’s the definition of hero — ordinary people who find themselves doing extraordinary things at extraordinary times.”
The documentary, with updated material, is set to air on CNN at 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 5, and again at 8 p.m. Sept. 11.