Six months after the first air plane struck the north tower, Mayor Bloomberg, Rudi Giuliani and others speak to the families of the victims under the resurrected sculpture that a German artist had built in a barn in Bavaria and Five weeks after the attack, Adlon and Koenig meet in New York and get permission to visit Ground Zero. Koenig witnesses, helplessly, the sculpture being taken apart. After he leaves, the pieces are stored at an open field at the Kennedy Airport. Nobody could foresee that the sculpture would be brought back to Manhattan within a few months.
In a parking lot, not for from Ground Zero, four engineers and fifteen ironworkers construct a new steel stand for the dismantled work of art. Fritz Koenig is present when the body, the base and several large pieces are hauled to historic Battery Park. He supervises the new installation; he inspires the workers with an expression of awe for their work and for the fact that, of all objects, his sculpture, although Òthin like an eggshellÓ had survived, and was about to become one of the most venerated monuments of the city.
shipped to Manhattan 30 years ago.
“It was a sculpture, now it’s a monument” remarked the lead engineer Richard Garlock.
The film’s New York scenes are interwoven with Koenig’s story about the making of the biggest bronze sculpture of our time. It’s the story of an extraordinary task, the story of broken art as a symbol of tortured humanity.
