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`One Day In September'

Scheduled to air on HBO, this year's winner of an Oscar
for Best Documentary goes behind the scenes of the terrorist attack
on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

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NAOMI PFEFFERMAN

Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

IC

evin Macdonald never
expected his documen-
tary One Day in
September to win the
Academy Award this year. Wim
Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club
was the favorite, while September
had already raised eyebrows.
An expose of the 1972 Munich
Olympic Games massacre of 11
Israeli athletes by members of the
Palestinian group Black September,
the movie answers questions that
have puzzled investigators for
decades. But even before the stun-
ning, suspenseful film was widely
viewed, it was controversial.
Some Israelis were disturbed that
September included the Palestinian
point of view, courtesy of the sole
surviving terrorist, whom
Macdonald had tracked down in
hiding.
The director says his film also
an unlikely filmmaker to attempt a movie on
angered the Germans, who are accused of bum-
The Israeli team at
the Israeli tragedy. He was only 4 during the
bling incompetence during the hostage crisis.
the opening ceremonies 1972 Olympics, after all. And he was raised
When the Palestinians and their captives fled
of the 1972 Munich on a sheep farm in the Scottish countryside, in
the Olympic Village for the airport, the movie
a community virtually devoid of Jews.
asserts, no one bothered to warn the authorities
Olympics.
Then again, his grandfather was the
there were eight terrorists instead of the pre-
Hungarian-born
Jewish screenwriter
sumed five.
Emeric Pressburger. With collaborator Michael Powell, he
No one called ahead for armored cars as the terrorists
created legendary British pictures such as The Red Shoes.
raced toward their jet to Libya. The Germans mustered only
"I knew he fled the Nazis," Macdonald says. "I knew I
five sharpshooters, none of them in radio contact with one
had cousins in Israel. And I was well aware that I had Jewish
another. And, at the last minute, the policemen disguised as
blood growing up in my small, rural community."
crew members aboard the jet voted the plan "too dangerous"
Pressburger, a small, shy, retiring figure, was fascinating to
and aborted the mission.
the
young Macdonald, who viewed his grandfather as "a
One
Day
in
September
No wonder some Germans saw red.
slightly enigmatic, exotic character."
was turned down by German distributors and attacked in the
The boy listened raptly as Pressburger spoke of living as a
German media, according to Variety. And Macdonald, for
tramp in 1920s Berlin, where he slept in the park and wrote
one, was "shocked" when the film was rejected by the Berlin
his first short stories on forms in the post office.
Film Festival.
Macdonald still has the letter Pressburger received, from a
"Not only did they turn it down, they hated it," he says.
large
German studio, stating that the company could no
"They made it clear ... they were appalled by the film and
longer
employ Jews.
found it unfair. We were so devastated," he adds.
The day after a colleague warned him he was to be arrest-
Nevertheless, he stands by his research, which he says was
ed, "my grandfather packed one bag, left his key in his apart-
gleaned from high-ranking officials and internal police docu-
ment door and took the train to Paris," Macdonald says.
ments, among other sources.
But even in the U.K., the director asserts, Pressburger
"Some people say I've made an anti-German film, but I
never felt quite at home. Macdonald believes residual British
didn't set out to do that," he insists. "I set out to make a
xenophobia is the reason Powell remains better known in
film about a terrorist attack. But the facts speak for them-
England than his grandfather.
selves."
So upon Pressburger's death, in 1988, Macdonald, an
At first glance, Macdonald, who is in his early 30s, seems