In the face of sudden disruption and inexplicable loss, there is a need to bridge the irreplaceable past with a hopeful future. This film follows people driven to preserve meaningful objects in the aftermath of 9/11 and other upheavals. Otherwise ordinary items come to symbolize experiences, aspirations, and identity. Without the objects, the stories would lack vibrancy; without the stories the objects would lack significance. Taken together, the images of the objects and the stories they evoke lead the viewer on a journey where the commonplace is transformed into the remarkable and where the stuff of history is highly personalized.
An EVER production | Jonathan Fein & Brian Danitz
Objects and Memory will be broadcast nationally on PBS beginning on Monday, September 8, as PBS's special in commemoration of the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Check your local listings for dates and times.
Objects and Memory is now available for purchase. The DVD includes additonal interviews, personal stories, and deleted/extended scenes. Available here.
“Objects and Memory...achieves a poignancy that makes it a dignified opening to the 9/11 anniversary week. ...Personal stories...are the core of this film... Objects—a rabbit's foot key chain, some old boots, a baseball—[are] displayed without explanation but so lovingly and respectfully photographed that they tell their own stories. Philip Glass’s music is the perfect accompaniment.”
New York Times
“With the anniversary of Sept. 11 coming up Thursday, this calm public broadcasting special reminds us that there can be more power in one ordinary found object than in all but the most eloquent rhetorical tributes...”
New York Daily News
“Moving and relevant”
Preservation Nation
“Objects and Memory, a new documentary from the production team of Jonathan Fein and Brian Danitz that airs Monday night on most PBS stations, takes an entirely different approach to Oklahoma City and, even more, to 9/11...Objects and Memory is a marvelous program, thoughtfully conceived and wonderfully realized. You won’t regret the hour you spend watching it.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Making compelling use of Frank Langella’s dusky, measured narration and Philip Glass’ alternately haunting, soaring music—as persistent as memory itself—the documentary considers the way everyday things can transform our lives and be themselves transformed in the wake of tragedy...In Objects and Memory, the physical metamorphosis of workaday items from the Trade Center becomes a metaphor for the effect of recovered possessions on the lives of survivors and victims’ families”
The Journal News
“What sounds like a college seminar on Proust is actually a documentary that explores how a traumatic event can turn everyday ephemera into timeless relics. Pegged to the anniversary of 9/11, the film (by Brian Danitz and Jonathan Fein) explores the urge of survivors, historians and witnesses of the terrorist attacks to collect objects from the rubble—bent keys, a crushed firefighter helmet, old credit cards—and transform them into personal memorials.”
“...Unlike some Sept. 11 memorials, Objects and Memory may not always trigger the saddest remembrances of that day. Just some of the most enduring."
New York Daily News
“The PBS documentary, Objects and Memory, which airs Sept. 8 at 10 p.m., explores the power of a piece of history, whether it is the door insignia from a firetruck or a woman's purse, to bring peace to the present and future generations.”
Christian Science Monitor
“...a meditation on how seemingly ordinary objects can serve as a link to past events and absent loved ones in the wake of catastrophic events...The film concludes that without such objects, the stories they represent would lack vibrancy, and that without the stories, the objects would lack significance. Objects and Memory is a moving exploration of how the two conjoin.”