RIGHT THERE PART 2

“Ripe for expansion into a longer film, this short expands on interviews undertaken with this same group years before, building a fascinating social history of contemporary events and their impacts.”

Maryam Philpott for The Reviews Hub – August 20, 2022

View Part 2 (09:44):

In 2021, ten years and a pandemic later, I wondered if tracking the kids down again was remotely possible.

The answer, it wasn’t. Ten years earlier, I had contacted parents but this time, I was dealing with 20-somethings.

In the serendipity of that summer, six of the original fourteen were willing to participate and showed up for RIGHT THERE PART 2. That included my daughter, Octavia Spelman. She was living in London and fortunately had a flight to New York booked for July.

When I reconnected with Emma Huibregtse (age 26) from the first film, she said she was now a filmmaker, a cameraperson and an editor. The DP of the first film, Melissa O’Brien, had moved away. Fortunately, Emma agreed to be in the film and to shoot it.

We used the flexibility of shooting on iPhones to revisit the unusual perspectives of these PS 234 kids.

This time when we filmed in one of the school’s south-facing classrooms, we could see the new One World Trade Center standing tall, its glass surface reflecting the sky.

We filmed at the memorial pool built on the footprint of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The tower that used to be the closest to PS 234. That is, before 9/11/01.

Florence Buchanan, Director

CREDITS