NEW YORK, New York (WCBS) — A vast archive of more than 1,000 hours of 9/11 footage is being donated to the New York Public Library.

Filmmakers who turned their cameras towards the people and asked New Yorkers to share their stories are now opening the collection to the public. Much of it has never seen before, even by the creators themselves.

“Point in the opposite direction”

On Sept. 11, 2001, filmmakers Steven Rosenbaum and his partner Pamela Yoder sent their crews to shoot a dating show for dog owners in Midtown Manhattan.

But when the first plane hit the North Tower, they rushed to redirect their cameras to Lower Manhattan.

“I said to these seven crews, if anyone needs to go home and be with their family, that’s fine. And everyone said no, we’re going,” Rosenbaum said.

He added, “One – I’ll never forget – he turned to me, one of the shooters, and he said, ‘What do we shoot?’ And I said, ‘There will be all of these news crews down there. Just look and see where they’re pointing, and point in the opposite direction.’ And that turned out to be pretty good advice.”

For the next week, they captured hundreds of hours of video showing not the wreckage, but the emotions and the humanity, unfiltered.

“My wife and I have seen more hours of 9/11 footage than any other two people on Earth”

To gather an even wider perspective, they put out a public request for footage.

“We put an ad in The Village Voice, and we said, if you saw 9/11 and have a camera, we want to talk to you,” Rosenbaum said.

The result was more than 1,200 hours of videos and interviews. So much poured in, it’s never been viewed in its entirety.

Rosenbaum says watching the footage now, the moment comes back to life.

“Literally like I was standing there,” he said.

The filmmakers released a documentary the following year using a fraction of the footage.

“My wife and I have seen more hours of 9/11 footage than any other two people on Earth. I’m positive of this. We still will look at a drive and be stunned at something we’ve never seen before,” he said.

The rest — about 1,000 hours — sat in their apartment until they decided to donate it to the NYPL archives.

“We’re just now beginning to look at 9/11 in the scope of a historical event”

The library will now take on the massive job of archiving the material responsibly.

“Archivists have an incredibly thoughtful attention to questions of privacy and violence, and it’s a very challenging tightrope that we walk because it is not our job to censor,” NYPL Curator Julia Golia said. “But it is our job to create structures of safety so that people can watch them in the right environment.”

The hope is the footage may eventually help shape new research, books and documentaries.

But above all, Rosenbaum wants to give future generations a deeper understanding of how New Yorkers lived through 9/11.

“News is the first draft of history. History begins in 20 years. We’re just now beginning to look at 9/11 in the scope of a historical event,” Rosenbaum said.

Curators say the archive will open by 2027 in phases: first in the library’s reading rooms, and later, when ready, online through the public library’s website.