Not long after Sept. 11, 2001, Jim Whitaker, a former executive at Imagine Entertainment, came to New York for a friend's wedding. The friend had worked on Wall Street and many of the guests had been immediately affected by the events at the World Trade Center.
The day after the celebration, Mr. Whitaker went to visit Ground Zero where, he said, "I was filled with this sense that one day everything would be rebuilt, and I just had a feeling of hope."
He had an idea to make a documentary, "to show the dread and anxiety and, ultimately, the hope that would come out of it."
Tim Brown, a firefighter who lost his best friend in 9/11, talks about his involvement in a new documentary, "Rebirth." The film, which premiered at Sundance this week, charts the grief and recovery of five victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in a series of interviews spanning several years.
The result is "Rebirth," which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Mr. Whitaker followed five subjects over the past decade or so, in an attempt to "see them in a time-lapse fashion, to see how they were dealing with their grief," he explained, at the Bing Bar on Main Street a few days after the film first screened. "Part of me knew there would be an emergence towards healing, but part of me didn't really know," he said. "I knew it was meant to be about physical and emotional healing."
This is Mr. Whitaker's first feature-length documentary. As of press time, the film hadn't yet found a commercial distributor.
How did you come upon your subjects?
I knew I was interested in a firefighter, but then it was a process of meeting several individuals.
I had to ask, Does our connection feel right? Because I knew it would be an emotional commitment of at least seven years of filming. It just had to be a gut feeling.
Some people said yes and then a week later, they didn't return a call. After the first interview the first year, one person dropped out.
How often would you interview them?
I would film them over important events all of the time—a marriage, a birth—but I'd really only interview them and have a deep, one-on-one conversation once a year. I'd finish my work at Imagine on a Friday and then run to the JetBlue terminal to catch a flight to New York.
The office was great, they understood I was working on this project. But eventually the lives of my subjects' shifted, they were moving to another plateau, and the film was announcing its own ending. I told Imagine I had to go and edit the film.
What surprised you about checking in with your subjects every year?
I thought it would take them seven years to regenerate that skin, but things seemed to be moving so fast about a year and a half into the project. After the fourth or fifth year of checking in, the subjects had all seemed to move to a different place. They'd had a fundamental movement toward healing.
Did you find dealing with the subject matter to be particularly emotional?
In the process, I was so in the work of it that I didn't think about it much, but by the end the film, I had a really emotional experience.
My mom had passed away just prior to Sept. 11, and I went into a bit of a lockstep. Interviewing people about their experiences allowed me to process mine. There was a level of innate curiosity, and I think at the end of the film, I was still dealing with some of the earlier grief.
You obviously went into this project knowing it would take many years to complete.
It's amazing to me that I'm at Sundance. But I think I set my expectations for a long process. I had a mindset for that.
There were times when I was wondering if we were going to be able to get to the end of it, but as it got bigger and bigger and bigger, I knew it was just going to take that long and I had to be open to it.
How did working in the film business help you make the film?
I used to work in documentaries before I attended the Producer's Program at USC and went to work at Imagine. But I also had a little more confidence about what I was doing. I knew who to call about processing film, to get the movie going. But it's a very personal film, not like anything I've ever done.
What has been the response of your subjects who've seen the film?
Brian, the firefighter, was surprised how physically he changed over the course of the film. Nick, the young boy, obviously changes remarkably over the movie. He ages from 15 to 25.
Was it hard for them to watch?
It wasn't. And coming to the festival, they've become like fast friends.
Did you feel more protective of your subjects because of what they went through?
I don't know if I felt more protective. I asked them to be as honest as they could so we could get to as intimate a place as possible. Like any documentarian, I needed to maintain an objective interest.
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