The Zapruder Footage

The most famous home movie in the world is the Super 8 film on which Abraham Zapruder captured the assassination of John F. Kennedy. ‘The ultimate fetish of the murder‘, the footage is called in the documentary. The film lasts only for 22 seconds, but every frame has been scrutinised, slowed down and analysed. The traffic sign in the film is universally known: before it blocks the view of the events, Kennedy is still waving at the crowd; when seconds later the president reappears he has been shot. Kennedy’s head explodes and Jacqueline Kennedy moves to the trunk of the car. Filmmaker Stan Brakhage calls the film a classic elegy on the president’s death. Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris explains the collective obsession with the film from the hope it exudes. ‘Somewhere in the film the answer must lie to the question what happened to Kennedy and America. However, this hope is false. Film is a lie.‘ This has turned Zapruder’s amateur footage into an icon of all lost dreams of America.