These are the kind of films that are the responsibility of a festival.
People have a tendency to stereotype shorts as being a means to an end (for filmmakers to) eventually produce a full-length feature. On the contrary, these short films stand on their own.
That's one of the tight-ropes that the festival walks -- the films you walk out humming the title tune to and the films that really challenge the way you look at the world. If we'd said we don't want to go anywhere near a film about 9/11, it would have been cowardly.
The aim is to give people a kind of handle on what's going on in this troubled world.
New York is a big town and has the biggest of everything, so it should not be daunted by having a huge festival.
Technology is a big part of it. The really unprecedented example to me is 'The War Tapes' [directed by Deborah Scranton], in which the soldiers themselves are making the film, showing what is going on and what they're going through. You can sense the dissatisfaction among the soldiers. After that, the [recent] news that generals are criticizing the war plan doesn't come as a big surprise.
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