Look Who it Was Random video

zapruder interview nov 22, 1963

595 views · Published 19 November 2013 · 4:54 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: vengencefrom1979 · 2013 · Education

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zapruder interview nov 22, 1963
Before Nov. 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder was an ordinary citizen of Dallas: a 58-year-old prosperous manufacturer of women's clothing who had arrived in the city from Russia by way of Brooklyn. If that day had unfolded differently, that is most likely what he would have remained. But like a small but growing number of Americans at the time, he was also a home-movie hobbyist. With his receptionist, Marilyn Sitzman, as location scout and technical support, Zapruder took his 414PD Director Series Bell and Howell 8-millimeter camera to a spot on Elm Street, not far from his office, hoping to film the presidential motorcade as it drove past. 
The 26.6 seconds of footage he captured — 486 frames, without sound — inscribed Zapruder's name in the official history and popular folklore of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Its images, blurry yet vivid, in color when almost all television and a great many movies were still in black and white, form part of what we know or think we know about what happened at Dealey Plaza. On the Web, you can find seemingly infinite versions: in slow motion, with musical accompaniment, with or without Kevin Costner's explanation and Oliver Stone's enhancements in "JFK." And you can encounter an equal number of arguments about what those silent, shaky frames mean: that Oswald acted alone; that other shooters were present; that a conspiracy came to fruition in plain sight; that the truth will never be known. 

The distance between 1963 and now can be measured by the fact that so few cameras were on the scene then. In retrospect, Zapruder can be seen — and is frequently cited — as a pioneer of citizen journalism, a resourceful amateur who caught something crucial that the professional news media somehow missed. Now, everyone with a smartphone is a potential Zapruder. 
But while the Zapruder film holds an important place in the evolution of media — perceptively examined by Alex Pasternack in an article on Vice's Motherboard site this year — it also belongs to the story of cinema. What Zapruder made, after all, was not a Vine or a YouTube post, but a film. This is partly a technical distinction, a matter of photochemical processes and separable frames as opposed to bits of digital information. For a dozen years after it was shot, the film was unseen by the public, an almost unthinkable fate now. But these material, technological facts are inseparable from the film's meaning, which remains a singularly potent topic of argument. 

In a 1993 interview in The Paris Review, Don DeLillo, our leading literary investigator of the epistemological shadowlands of American politics and technology, made a distinction between Kennedy's assassination, which was captured on film, and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, which happened in front of television cameras. As a result, "Oswald's death became instantly repeatable," he said. "It belonged to everyone. The Zapruder film, the film of Kennedy's death, was sold and hoarded and doled out very selectively. It was exclusive footage." 

notes on zapruder compliments of the new York times.

the building at the end of the video is WTC 2, collapsing, apparently from thermite charges being planted during a renovation of the elevator shafts.

the song at the end is an excerpt from 'War Pigs' by Black Sabbath,

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