102 Minutes That Changed America is an American television specialdocumentary film that was produced by the History Channel and premiered commercial-free on Thursday, September 11, 2008, marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The film serves as a compilation of amateur footage taken by numerous people filming the attacks, edited together to present the film in real time.
Its name comes from the timespan from the first impact of American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:46 AM to the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28 AM (although the film begins and ends two minutes later than each of those times). The film depicts, in real time, the New York–based events of the attacks primarily using various sources including[1] raw footage from mostly amateur citizen journalists, focusing mainly on the reactions of New York inhabitants during the incident. The documentary is accompanied by an 18-minute documentary short called I-Witness to 9/11, which features interviews with nine firsthand eyewitnesses who captured the footage on camera.
According to this film, most of the archival footage was in possession of the U.S. government but was not released to History until years after 9/11.
The documentary film attracted 5.2 million viewers.[2]
The program aired on Channel 4 in the UK, France 3 in France, History Channel in Brazil on 7 September 2009, SBS6, in the Netherlands on 9 September 2009 and on ZDF in 2009 and 2010.[3] The 7 September 2021 was aired in Catalonia on TV3's program Sense ficció.[4] In this channel, the film featured a high audience with 345,000 viewers and 18.4% share, thus achieving the program's best record since 18 May 2021.[5]A&E Television Networks, parent company of History, aired it across all of their cable networks on September 11, 2011, at 8:46 a.m. EDT, the exact time American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into 1 World Trade Center ten years earlier.[6]
