HIDDEN TROVE OF 9/11 HISTORY TO BE REVEALED

The Day The World Changed

An Eight-Episode Long-Form Nonfiction Series.

From Creator/Director Team Steven Rosenbaum / Pamela Yoder

NEW YORK CITY — September 11, 2019 — MagnifyMedia today announced that Steven Rosenbaum (7 Days In September) and Pamela Yoder (Witness 9/11) have partnered with Michael Cascio (Inside 9/11), Karol Martesko-Fenster (Hell and Back Again) and Joe Cantwell (Ride The Divide) to produce The Day The World Changed, an eight-episode documentary series tracking the design, curation, and construction of the massive National 9/11 Memorial & Museum even as world events and US politics leaves critics saying the museum’s take on history may be deeply flawed. The series is slated for completion and release on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — 2021.

“The Rosenbaum/Yoder project has rare and revealing new footage that brings a new perspective to 9/11” said Michael Cascio, the executive producer who created National Geographic’s record-shattering mini-series Inside 9/11. “The behind-the-scenes issues that come to light are even more relevant twenty years after the attack.”

The series has exclusive access to Rosenbaum/Yoder’s unseen 670 hours of footage shot over the course of 7 years with the team that built the museum. The debates, disagreements, and conflicts within the museum team in many ways reflect the country’s deeply conflicted feelings about 9/11, and the nation’s now longest wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the middle east. “When the terrorists hit two towers, their plan was to strike at the heart of America,” said Filmmaker Rosenbaum. “Now, as we look back on the past 20 years, we see an unrelenting attack on the idea of America and the freedoms and rights that we hold most dear.”

Today, as the Museum honors the victims of the attack, the message of the museum is far less clear. “The museum was originally planned to ask questions,” says museum Creative Director Michael Shulan. “But today it is a museum with far more periods than question marks at the end of sentences. I didn’t join the team to close off conversations.”

The series begins on the morning of 9/11 and will explore the historic Camera Planet Archive — including more than 500 hours of never before seen material from the day. “We collected and archived this material, knowing that our children’s children would one day ask, ‘what happened’ and we wanted them to be able to see for themselves,” said archive curator Pamela Yoder. “The footage is now safely stored at the Museum, but only a small portion of it is available to the public.”

The inside fly-on-the-wall material from inside the team is unparalleled. Crushed firetrucks are brought out of hiding, from their secret storage facility at an abandoned airplane hangar at JFK. Personal items, a fireman’s turn out uniform, a pair of shoes, a port authority ID badge, are connected with stories, names, and faces. But 9/11 is about far more than heroes and first responders. And the Museum team’s conflicts are in many ways reflective of America’s divided political environment. One architect fired off the project calls his treatment a ‘betrayal.’ And at the same time, 9/11 gives three US Presidents unfettered powers to change how Americans are treated by their government.

Filmmakers Yoder and Rosenbaum stated, “From the moment George Bush unleashed ’Shock And Awe” in Baghdad, we’ve seen a changed America. The Patriot Act, the dramatic increase in our military budget and our increased use of unmanned drones to bomb terrorists and accidental civilian casualties overseas has unleashed terror targeted on our shores. As American’s feel unsafe and targeted, minority communities, immigrants, and Muslims all find themselves diminished members of the American dream.”

To look at the current state of America, The Day The World Changed will deploy a number of young, engaged, questioning explorers to ask hard questions. Among them, explorer Arjun Singh Sethi a community activist, civil rights lawyer, writer, and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Sethi is based in Washington, DC. He works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh communities and advocates for racial justice, equity, and social change and explorer Baratunde Thurston, an American writer, comedian, and political commentator. Thurston co-founded the black political blog Jack and Jill Politics, and was director of digital for The Onion. The filmmakers have partnered with CBS News to provide both historical archives and interviews with key CBS journalists. The past two decades has been an era of unprecedented social and pollical change. Even as the museum was being constructed, elements of the country were being torn apart. The CBS News partnership will provide extraordinary historical context.

“This is a project that should be of interest to all Americans, and anyone around the world who’s interested in the future of democratic ideals. 9/11 is the first page of a new chapter in American history, and it’s one that many have tried to put in the rearview mirror. But looking at what’s happening today, it’s clear that the impact of 9/11 hasn’t been fully considered or questioned — as its impact continues to tear at our social fabric. This series is critically important, and I’m proud to be part of the team,” said executive producer Karol Martesko-Fenster.

THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED (2021, USA, 8 x 60 minutes, English) — Executive Producers Michael Cascio, Karol Martesko-Fenster, and Joe Cantwell. Producers Pamela Yoder and Steven Rosenbaum. Directed by Steven Rosenbaum. More info can be found at www.theday.nyc

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About Magnify Media

MagnifyMedia is the production, research, and editorial home of Steven Rosenbaum and Pamela Yoder. The company was founded before 9/11, and has remained a significant producer of documentary film, television, and web nonfiction for over 20 years. For more information visit www.magnifymedia.com

About Michael Cascio

With four Emmys, two Oscar nominations and “Producer of the Year” award, Michael Cascio has executive-level experience in successful television programming, production, and journalism. Most recently, he was Executive Producer of At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing on HBO, as well as the award-winning Munich ’72 and Beyond, and PBS specials The Great American Read and Going to War. As SVP/EVP at A&E, Animal Planet, MSNBC and National Geographic, he created and supervised the award-winning and highly-rated Inside 9/11, The ’90s: The Last Great Decade?, Restrepo, The Farm, Human Footprint and Titanic: Death of a Dream, along with award-winning and popular series such as Brain Games, Biography, Investigative Reports, Dog Whisperer and Doomsday Preppers. Cascio also advises selected media and production partners such as Food Network, National Geographic Channel, Nutopia, Towers Productions, Burson-Marstellar, Wolf Trap Park for the Performing Arts, AccuWeather, and many others. He also writes a regular column on factual media for Realscreen and his writing has been published in The New York Times and elsewhere.

About Karol Martesko-Fenster

Karol is Partner & Chief Operating Officer of specialized theatrical distributor Abramorama and CCO of Thought Engine Partners. He is a producer of Benjamin and Jonathan Bergmann’s Mau and Gelato and Thomas Wirthensohn’s Into The Field and Homme Less (2014 DOCNYC Grand Jury Award. He is an Executive Producer on Daniel McCabe’s This Is Congo, Leslie Iwerk’s Ella Brennan: Commanding The Table, Amy Benson’s Drawing The Tiger, Phil Cox’s The Love Hotel and The Bengali Detective (2013 Grierson Documentary Award), Noel Dernesch & Moritz Springer’s Journey To Jah (2013 Zurich Film Festival Audience Award. He was the Production Executive on Emmett Malloy’s Big Easy Express (2013 Grammy Award and 2012 SXSW Audience Headliner Award) and Harry Belafonte’s Sing Your Song (2012 NAACP Image Award) and Executive Producer of Danfung Dennis’s Hell and Back Again (2013 Grierson Documentary Award, 2013 EMMY best Documentary Award Nominee, 2012 Academy Award Best Documentary Nominee, and 2011 Sundance World Documentary Grand Jury and Cinematography Award Winner). Martesko-Fenster was the President of Film & Media for Michael Cohl’s S2BN Entertainment and Head of Film at Chris Blackwell’s Palm Pictures. He has produced 25+ television and satellite broadcast music programs, multiple Webby Award-winning programs including wetheeconomy.com and focusforwardfilms.com, and he co-founded FILMMAKER Magazine, RES Magazine, and the media content enterprises indiewire.com, cinelan, hackateerventures.com, and conditionone.com.

About Joe Cantwell

Joe Cantwell is an entrepreneur, investor, and independent film and television producer. As an executive in the media industry, Joe served in several senior distribution, marketing, operations, product, and programming management roles at The Disney Channel, AMC Networks where he was a founding executive of the Independent Film Channel (IFC), AOL, and Starz Entertainment. He is a graduate of the Chicago Booth School of Business and resides in Washington, D.C.