102 Minutes That Changed America

102 Minutes That Changed America is an American television special documentary film that was produced by History and premiered commercial-free on September 11, 2008, marking the seventh anniversary of the attacks. The film depicts in virtually real time the New York-based events of the September 11 attacks primarily using raw video footage from mostly amateur citizen journalists. According to this film, most of the archival video footage was in possession of the U.S. government but was released to History years after 9/11. 102 minutes passed between the first plane's impact into One World Trade Center, the second plane's attack on Two World Trade Center, and the eventual collapse of both buildings. In that time, people around New York experienced a range of emotions. Despite the horror and the incomprehensibility of what was happening, many knew, somehow, that they had a unique responsibility to record what they saw. They reached for their cameras. This unprecedented documentary special joins hundreds of pieces of their footage and audiotape into a single, seamless historical record. It is an intensely personal perspective of the tragedy, communicating for the first time that morning's events, as they were experienced by people around New York. It is an evocative, authentic and reverential memorial to one of the most cataclysmic events in world history. The documentary is accompanied by an 18-minute documentary short called I-Witness to 9/11, which features interviews with nine firsthand eyewitnesses who captured the video footage on camera.