Haunting short film that captured extreme weather also chronicled World Trade Center's final hours

On Sept. 10, 2001, the world was about to change. The World Trade Center's hours were numbered and an artist captured what would become the iconic twin towers' last moments.

The weather in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, was beautiful -- a clear and pleasant late-summer day that was marred by the smoke of burning jet fuel and billowing clouds of pulverized dust from collapsed skyscrapers after a terrorist attack was carried out against the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the worst such attack ever on United States soil.

Hours before terrorists flew hijacked jetliners into the twin towers, the weather was turbulent. Even ominous. A series of thunderstorms rumbled through New York City on Monday, Sept. 10, and hundreds of miles to the east of the city, a massive hurricane loomed off the coast.

Footage of the storms was caught on video by a New York City-based artist who had been using studio space near the top of the North Tower that she and 15 other artists, who were working there through a residency program, had been provided by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center. The haunting and beautiful images Monika Bravo, then a 37-year-old artist from Bogota, Colombia, captured that stormy night represent the last known images of the World Trade Center prior to video captured seconds before an airplane was flown into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. EDT.

Bravo strung the footage into a short film set to music, a piece of work that stands as the last known images of the World Trade Center before the towers fell and the world changed that dark day. Here is that story.

The mountains of Bogota

Bravo wanted to work from the 92nd floor of the skyscraper because she missed the clouds. As an artist, her creativity was rooted in her emotions and her origins, back in the mountains of Bogota where she grew up.

"The mountains, the elevation and looking at the clouds are part of my life," Bravo told AccuWeather. "In New York, I really missed having the clouds and having the mountains. I’ve been here for 25 years, but when I think of home, I think of a place high in mountains with beautiful weather and beautiful clouds, sometimes blue skies and sometimes thunderstorms ... New York is just a mountain of concrete buildings, it’s not for me. But that’s why when I went to the World Trade Center, I wanted a connection to the clouds, because the clouds are a connection back to my source, where I come from. It’s a very home-like experience," she recalled about her perch in a studio on the 92nd floor.

But for the entire summer of 2001, Bravo was left frustrated by the lack of eventful weather and the calm clouds that swirled outside her office. Working on a film piece, she grew increasingly disappointed that she wouldn't capture the weather footage she needed.

However, Sept. 10 finally offered a change.

"On that day, on Sept. 10, there was a big thunderstorm that started around 2:55 p.m. and that’s what I ended up recording and saving into this tape," Bravo said.

The next day, Bravo's world would crumble and the scenes she shot that day would become the last surviving footage filmed inside the North Building of the World Trade Center.

'Uno Nunca Muere La Vispera'

"You die when you have to, every other day you have to keep on living," Bravo said of the translation of her film's title to English.

"The title is a reference to an email that I received from a curator friend of mine a few days later, when she said, 'You never die the day before you’re supposed to die.'"

At 2:55 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, Bravo set up her camera and began filming seven hours' worth of thunderstorm footage. She was so excited to finally shoot her needed scenes that she didn't want to leave the office.

At 11 p.m., her then-husband called her and urged her to come home.

"I said, ‘No, it’s so beautiful, I should stay and keep on filming.’ And he knew that I was very intent and when I want something I do it," she said. "But he kept arguing and said ‘It’s not correct, come back.’ The only reason I went back home was because he said I don’t have any water and I don’t have any cigarettes. So I agreed and remember relenting, saying ‘OK, OK, I’ll go home,’ and I remember taking the tape of the storm home because I wanted to show him the beautiful storm I had just filmed."

The next morning, Bravo and her husband were awoken by a call from a worried friend, begging to know if she was home. Living in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood just across the East River from Lower Manhattan, Bravo had a clear view of the towers.

Bravo froze when she looked out her window. She immediately recognized the violent intentions behind the smoke billowing into the sky.

"The building was on fire and I was yelling and screaming and saying, ‘Oh, my stuff, I left my stuff there,’ but I knew I had my tape and I wasn’t really thinking of anything more than just the fire," Bravo said. "I remember looking at the building and trying to count the floors that were from the top, downwards, to see if the fire was coming from one of our floors. As I was doing that, I saw the second plane came in."

Wooden file cabinet

Every night up until Sept. 10, Bravo would take all of her belongings home. Working in an open studio, she recognized that her whole livelihood existed within her tools and her art.

"But that night, I decided to leave all my equipment, like my computer and everything, because I had found this wooden file cabinet that belonged to an office in the building and it had a key," she said. "I remember putting the stuff in there and laughing to myself, saying ,‘What if there is a fire?’ And then I looked up and saw the sprinklers, and said, ‘Oh come on, this is the World Trade Center, there would never be a fire.’ But something told me that I had to take the tape with me that day."

As she left the office for what would be the final time that night, she looked back and saw Michael Richards, a fellow artist who shared a workspace with her.

"So I said goodbye to him and I know he was watching a game that night, I don’t know who was playing, but he was watching a game with another guy in the studio, Jeff," she said. "I said bye to them and I didn’t know I wouldn’t come back."

Michael Richards

Within an hour of witnessing the shock and horror of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, Bravo was organizing a meeting with her fellow artists who had lost everything in the attacks. She knew that they would need to stick up for themselves and each other, as the rest of the world focused on the tragedies.

Every artist answered and agreed to meet, except one.

"At the time, a lot of people didn’t have cellphones," Bravo said. "I was trying to call to see if they were there and everybody was home, except Michael. So we immediately realized that he was there. His phone wouldn’t pick up."

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After the group's second meeting, a week after the attacks, Bravo remembered her film and recognized the importance of the footage she possessed. She had no idea what to do with it.

"That was the first feeling, like, 'Oh my gosh, I have this tape, what am I going to do with it? It was a beautiful tape, what am I going to do with this?'" she said. "So I remember my first intention was to put together a film and give it to everybody. I had this footage that I didn’t know what to do with, and in honor of Michael, we’re going to give it away and we won’t profit from it, but this is a piece of history. I felt like I didn’t want to have it with me, because I didn’t want to have any attention on me and I remember asking myself ‘Why me? Why did I have to keep this film?’"

In the description of her video posted to Vimeo, Bravo writes that the seven hours of time-lapse storm footage is dedicated to Richards' memory. She said she has been approached many times by people wanting to buy the film, but it has never been for sale.

As an artist, a viewer's emotional connection to her artwork was never a responsibility that fell on Bravo. Nature, for Bravo, has always been an avenue for that emotional connection.

"Emotions play a big role in my work because I work with sensations and perceptions. I always want the viewer to have a platform where they can connect with it themselves," Bravo said. "When they connect with their emotions, they connect with themselves, and something like this can connect to their own emotional state related to 9/11. It's your own mind. I did my job in putting it out there, and then whenever you watch the film it's on you to make your own emotional connections with it."

Hurricane Erin

Hundreds of miles away, unbeknownst to Bravo, Hurricane Erin swirled off the coast of the Northeast. Induced by a cold front from the Atlantic, Erin built the setting for Bravo's historic film.

"Just off the Northeast coast, a cold front began to move Hurricane Erin out to sea," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jesse Ferrell said. "That cold front had, the previous evening, produced thunderstorms over New York City. The presence of a hurricane off the coast was also not unusual, with the peak of hurricane season occurring, on average, on Sept. 10."

As Bravo looked out her window on the tragic Tuesday morning the next day, smoke from the attacks flowed from the winds Erin ushered in.

"Because of the position of the high pressure (which brought the sunny weather) and Hurricane Erin, both were encouraging a wind flow from north to south," Ferrell said. "This dictated where the smoke plumes traveled on that fateful Tuesday morning."

The weather on Sept. 11 was calm and pleasant. Ferrell noted the historical significance of a brilliantly sunny sky, one that played a key role in the ways the day was recorded and remembered.

But for the last living footage of what happened in the buildings before the attacks, Bravo's film holds a significance far larger than any other project.

"It’s a very haunting piece," Bravo said. "For me, it’s very eerie because the weather sort of brings back these emotions. The weather makes us feel a lot; it can make us fearful or make us hopeful. In here, it was kind of like everything was accumulating towards something. Even the pace of the music makes it feel like something is about to happen, and this is the last time we can see things from this point of view, this high. It’s like looking into a world that doesn’t exist anymore."

Watch Bravo's short film, Uno nunca muere la vispera, below.

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