WTC View

After viewing dozens of features and shorts at 2005's Newfest in New York City, 12 festival days climaxed for me at the screening of WTC View. The story of a gay man living 12 blocks from Ground Zero placing an ad in the Village Voice for a roommate to share his Soho apartment on Sept. 10, 2005, his respondents' and his reactions during the next few weeks plucked a string in this ex-New Yorker's soul that is still resonating as I write this.

Just like that fateful day of November 22, 1963, hardly any of us will forget what we were doing and where we were when we heard of 9/11. I was sitting with a now-deceased friend of mine in my Amsterdam canal house apartment when the phone rang not long after 3 pm Central European Time and a Dutch friend of mine told me to turn on CNN to see something incredible. And indeed, from 3000 miles away the shock and panic pierced me to the core. To relive a group of New Yorkers' own narratives and reactions was both purifying and heart-rending.

The individual stories of the characters in WTC View, each a personal and personalized vignette of how their lives had been changed on that fateful morning, death and survival intertwined, the New Yorker's coping strategy confronted by 'you can run but you can no longer hide', healthy reactions to sick jokes, all make this a film no one should miss.

Kudos especially for director Brian Sloan and actors Michael Urie and Nick Potenzieri as well as the rest of the players who had me laughing and crying from beginning to end.