Movie marathon explores 9/11 films, documentaries

Coastal Bend College will commemorate September 11 on the Beeville campus with an all-day movie marathon on Monday, Sept. 12 in the Grady C. Hogue Resource Center. The 9/11-themed viewing is intended to show many sides of the historical significance of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. A different movie will run every two hours. The schedule and synopses follow.

9 a.m.: World Trade Center (2006) PG-13

Director Oliver Stone helms this gripping docudrama set amid the rubble of Sept. 11, 2001. Working under treacherous conditions, an army of dedicated rescuers desperately hopes to find anyone who survived the World Trade Center’s tragic collapse. But their efforts pay off when they unearth Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and William J. Jimeno (Michael Pena) trapped near an elevator shaft.

 11 a.m.: 9/11 (2002) NR

This heartfelt documentary was created by award-winning French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who simply set out to make a movie about a rookie NYC fireman and ended up filming the tragic event that changed our lives forever. The program includes additional footage and interviews with the heroic firefighters, rescue workers and the Naudet brothers, providing exclusive insight to their extraordinary firsthand experience of the day’s events.

1 p.m.: United 93 (2006) R

Re-creating the harrowing events aboard United Airlines Flight 93 in real time, documentary filmmaker Paul Greengrass presents the unforgettable drama of Sept. 11, 2001, as experienced by those on board and by those watching in horror on the ground. This compact yet powerful story earned Greengrass an Oscar nod and follows a disparate group of strangers that bands together for a common purpose, risking their lives so that others might live.

3 p.m.: Saint of 9/11 NR

Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, is best remembered as the faithful Franciscan priest who was killed on 9/11. The beloved friar lived a fulfilling life helping the needy and wasn’t your ordinary man of the cloth: he battled alcoholism and was a privately gay man. Through interviews, archival footage and Sir Ian McKellen’s narration, Glenn Holsten documents this extraordinary man’s life until his untimely death.

5 p.m.: FahrenHYPE 9/11 (2004) UR

Narrated by political consultant Dick Morris, this counterattack to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 sets out to poke holes in the issues raised by Moore’s film during a heated election year. Created with the intent to debunk Moore’s approach to filmmaking, his motives and his incendiary movie, the film features interviews with authors, experts and politicians including Senator Zell Miller, former NYC mayor Ed Koch and author Ann Coulter.

 Multiple events are scheduled on Sept. 12. A guest speaker, an exhibit and interactive display are included in the college-wide observance of the tenth anniversary 9/11. Students on all campuses will be able to share a commemorative blog. Everyone in encouraged to post to it. Those posts will be accessible for all to read through the college website, http://www.coastalbend.edu.

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