ONE YEAR LATER - Interviews and Radio

The travelogue as a seismograph of the state of the nation: Niki LerchŽs ONE YEAR LATER – Interviews and Radio follows a simple experiment to investigate the traumatization of the American public after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. One year after the catastrophe, the director travelled up the west coast of the U.S. and took random samples, sounding out the aftereffects which 9/11 left behind not only in the official memorial discourse, but also in individual and associative memories. In doing so, he consciously combines cliché-like super 8 images from Hollywood, Las Vegas, and San Francisco – all taken from a moving car – with excerpts from radio shows about the anniversary: the PresidentŽs speech, reports of memorial celebrations, advertisements; all rehashing national forms of edification. Tourist sights and landmarks dart by, while airplanes continually cut in, painting a sign of the omnipresent threat into the landscape. In between, one hears and reads – transcribed in white on a black background – anonymous interview passages, which capture the individual degrees of shock. The majority of the random samples, characterized by skepticism towards the war, and in part by blind impotence, contradicts the vox populi of officially mandated patriotism, but likewise bears witness to an inner turmoil: “We are like a boxer in the ring thatŽs got a little bloody nose, all you did was make us mad. man, I donŽt want that!” The journey ends silently at a site which, in a historically ambiguous way, allegorizes the national tragedy more than any other: Monument Valley, where today one finds the descendants of those Navajo who once fell victim to the imperialism of the white man. Here, the flags fly at half-mast for a reason; with or without September 11.
(Christian Höller)
Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt