Why I made Pulled from the Rubble

In August 2003, I was on the Advanced Programme at the National Film and Television School. I had enrolled at the school to make a documentary film about the American poet, and a relative of mine, William Carlos Williams. I had written a script, gathered a crew of three, and had bought airline tickets for early September.

I was also busy helping my family move house. There was a heat wave and the physical labour was unbearable. We were trying to get the move complete before Papa left for a research trip to Baghdad, Iraq, on the 17th of August.

Then, on the afternoon of the 19th of August, a neighbour ran into our garden. She had been watching the news and had heard that the United Nations head-quarters in Baghdad had been devastated by a truck bomb. We knew that Papa and his colleague were due to be visiting the head of the UN in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, but we did not yet know whether he was in the building at the time of the explosion.

20 hours later, when my family and I first heard about the extent of Papa’s injuries, our whole lives became focused on his recovery. In the first few weeks his survival was not at all a sure thing. We entered into a world which was marked moment by moment by each of his slow, methodical breathes. Nothing outside of this world was relevant.

Once Papa left intensive care and was allowed to wake, we began to look forward to his return home and to consider the ways in which he might be able to walk again. But we also began to search for the details of the event. Papa was particularly interested in learning how he was saved and pulled from the rubble alive. He remembered snippets of his rescue through a morphine induced haze, but he wanted to learn more.

This quest for knowledge of the rescue was what encouraged me to pick up my camera again. Everyday I witnessed Papa trying hard to get on with his life, acknowledging what had happened but being active in spite of it, and I wanted to do the same. I went to Geneva and to New York to interview people at the UN about the bomb. The aim was to collect information about the bomb that I could return home to show to my family and from which I could make a film to show to a wider audience.

Between trips I filmed my family at home sometimes talking about the bomb, but mostly re-adapting everyday living to Papa’s injuries. What struck us all, and the people around us, was Papa’s energy and enthusiasm for life. He mourned his colleagues deeply and felt that he was incredibly lucky to be alive. It was partly through amazement at his positive attitude and at his remarkable recovery that I wanted to keep recording. I was never sure whether the video record I was keeping at home was for myself or for a wider public. Sometimes I filmed as a means of distancing myself from upsetting moments. Sometimes I filmed so that those moments would never be forgotten.

Some months, and hours and hours of video later, I started the editing process. During the assembly edit I was very confused about the film I was making. In trying to edit the interviews of UN staff, something didn’t feel right. I slowly realised I was trying to tell somebody else’s story and what I needed to do was tell my own. After this realisation, I suddenly became interested in showing our experiences as a family, and why I felt I needed to film and keep a record.

This became the film. It was a very difficult film to make, even when the narrative was at last found. It is also a difficult film for me and my family to show, but it needs to be shown. When we open the newspaper or turn on the television and see the latest report of an explosion, killing and injuring tens and hundreds of people, most of us are overwhelmed. How can we possibly take on board that horror? We read of the numbers of dead and the numbers of injured, and we may easily lose sight of or feeling for the individual. But individual stories are what makes us human. They are what makes us feel for each other. I can only hope that through making and showing, Pulled from the Rubble, I have made a small contribution towards a more peaceful world.