Circling Zero: Part One, We See Absence 2002

Directed by Ken Jacobs

Our daughter Nisi and son Aza happened to both be staying at our loft on Chambers Street when fundamentalist Islam struck. A friend observing the burning buildings from Brooklyn phoned to say, “Get out. It can fall on you.” But we were upstate until 9.15 when the city partially reopened to incoming traffic, so that my taping begins with our approach over the almost empty George Washington Bridge. It would be another 15 days before we were allowed to move back into our place. Our friend Lucia lent us her high-rise apartment, facing south with a dead-on view of smoking lower Manhattan. I kept taping, hours of street observations. Although I’ve given a title to this loose selection of materials it is not so much a work as sampling of the ongoing actuality. --Ken Jacobs