Three Nights at Ground Zero

After the initial shock of watching the World Trade Center collapse, Matt Siegel and Robert Segal, who found themselves in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, decided to volunteer their services to any agency that needed them. Over the next three days, while encountering more confusion than coordination, more chaos than cooperation, the pair helped out where they could, bringing in coffee and food from a Burger King that had been set up as the temporary NYPD headquarters. Not surprisingly, they also happened to have a camcorder and thus are able to present this totally non-professional, non-edited, non-scripted look at Ground Zero. Where other videos focused on Mayor Giuliani and President Bush, the shaky images presented here are of firefighters, rescue personnel, and other volunteers. Using maps to show how they dodged and darted around National Guard blockades, the pair also ask a firefighter to take them down into the bowels of World Trade Center 7, and photograph the graffiti that was scrawled on the walls of the Millennium Hotel lobby. Narrated by Jim Melloan, Three Nights at Ground Zero is a low-budget but real (and occasionally graphic) half-hour program that is recommended, overall (and is valuable for the source footage alone). Aud: C, P. (J. Carlson)