Date: 9/11/22 @ 7pm
Location:
The Vogue
(415) 346-2228
3290 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
adam@cinemasf.com
Le père de Fernando est un émigré mexicain qui travaillait dans le célèbre restaurant d'une des Twin Towers. Quand les deux avions ont percuté les immeubles, Ferando décide de passer la frontière pour retrouver son père. Un récit poignant.
Read MoreBased on the screenplay from a 2019 film, Windows on the World is, on the surface, a story about a young man searching for his father in the aftermath of 9/11; upon reading, you realize that it’s also a blistering commentary on America and its treatment of undocumented people.
Read MorePopular mythology has it that “America was never more united” than in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and that we’ve somehow devolved into a divided and fractured nation in the years since. The simple fact, though, is that almost no other country sugar-coats its own past the way the United States does, and that a very direct line can be traced from the “fortress America” nationalism that took hold after 9/11 to the openly anti-immigrant sentiments that are all too depressingly common today. It’s just that no one talks about it — or, rather, no one talked about it until now.
Read MoreOn September 11, 2001, in the wake of terrorist attacks, many Americans felt like survivors, especially New Yorkers, most especially first responders and families of the victims. We read news accounts, saw their faces on fliers, journalists interviewed them. But of the undocumented immigrants who perished, there were no photos that appeared on walls and no one to comfort their families. Robert Mailer Anderson, Zack Anderson and Jon Sack have collaborated on a graphic novel, Windows On The World, published by Fantagraphics, that tells one such story of an undocumented worker working as a dishwasher at Windows of the World atop the World Trade Center.
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Last year, San Francisco native Robert Mailer Anderson brought “Windows on the World” to the big screen, a film he spent more than a decade producing and co-writing with his cousin Zack Anderson. After a successful run on the festival circuit, the motion picture was set to open on 100 theater screens nationwide this summer until the coronavirus pandemic shut down cinemas.
Now you can watch it at home on a variety of streaming services, including Amazon Prime, YouTube, and the newly-launched Spanish-language channel Vix.
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The Edward James Olmos movie “Windows on the World,” about a Mexican family’s ordeal during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was scheduled to open on 100 theater screens nationwide this summer. Then, the novel coronavirus struck and shut down cinemas worldwide.
So the film’s producers scrambled to find another way to release the movie. They settled on a small but fast-growing streaming service called VIX. The platform has 20,000 hours of mostly Spanish-language content and has a large following in Mexico and in the U.S.
“All things being equal, they were the best,” said co-writer and producer Robert Mailer Anderson. “They understood the film.”
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In many ways there’s never been a beginning and America has always been a place where the other is demoralized and discarded socially and economically while being charged with keeping the nation running through backbreaking work, demeaning work. At the same time, 9-11 seems like the beginning of the current iteration of American repression of the other. You know what I mean when I say “the other.” It’s those who are perceived as not “us.”
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About this Event
Robert Mailer Anderson, joined by Jacqueline Obradors, Jon Sack, with musical accompaniment by Jay Walsh (of Douglas Fir) celebrating his new graphic novel Windows on the World, Co-authored with Zack Anderson, Illustrations by Jon Sack, published by Fantagraphics Books.
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The new film Windows on the World, directed by Michael D. Olmos, pays tribute to the undocumented victims of the September 11th terror attacks and honors the courage and sacrifices of America’s immigrant community. Ryan Guzman co-stars as Fernando, the son of an undocumented immigrant by the name of Balthazar (played by Edward James Olmos, father of Michael D.), who trekked from his native Mexico to work as a busboy at the World Trade Center’s upper-floor restaurant, Windows on the World. On duty when the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11, Balthazar may or may not have survived the destruction. Yet when Fernando journeys to New York to search for his father, the outcome is as bittersweet as it is bewildering.
David E. Russo, who also wrote the music for several original songs on the soundtrack (now on Ropeadope Records), conceived an underscore that ties itself to New York’s diverse musical heritage and the emotional connection shared by the film’s primary characters.
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In the new drama “Windows on the World,” Edward James Olmos plays an undocumented busboy working at the restaurant that was destroyed on 9/11. The moving immigration story, which debuted for free this week on the Latino-focused streaming site Vix, is just the latest turn in a storied career that includes an Oscar nomination for Olmos’s work in “Stand and Deliver” (1988), making him one of the few American-born Latino actors ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.
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EXCLUSIVE: The Edward James Olmos immigrant drama Windows on the World is set to exclusively premiere on April 23 on the free Latino-focused streaming service Vix. The film originally planned a theatrical debut this summer, but like many other films, it is adapting to the box office shutdown and shifting to streaming for its worldwide theatrical release.
Read MoreThis heart-wrenching 9/11 drama draws back the curtains on American myths, revealing a global and complicated world. Fernando is a college dropout working as a bellhop and reading Don Quixote in his native Mazatlan, Mexico, when the Twin Towers fall. His father, Balthazar, works as a dishwasher in the Windows on the World restaurant and sends money home to his family. Fernando’s mother spots Balthazar in a news clip of people fleeing the wreckage and soon Fernando is making his way to New York City. At a 9/11 rescue center, he’s told that “if [your father] didn’t officially work in the Towers, he can’t officially be missing.” From Downtown to Spanish Harlem, Fernando navigates a minefield of racism in the grieving city—and finds romance or something adjacent along the way. Joining a crew of Nigerian window washers, Fernando gains more insight into inequities with each swipe of his squeegee. Though he begins to mourn his father, he later discovers his disappearance is due to a smaller, domestic tragedy. The art is bold, cinematic, and deeply shadowed, and the unexpected ending is a product of cynical wisdom from looking back at the two decades since the event, and stronger for it. This is a resonant tale for troubling times. (May)
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Set in a New York City in mourning, this poignant graphic novel explores the push-and-pull between love and obligation.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, an undocumented worker named Balthazar busses tables at New York City’s famous Windows on the World restaurant. Back in Mexico, his family watches their TV screen in horror as the Twin Towers collapse. Refusing to give up hope that Balthazar is alive, his son Fernando embarks on a treacherous journey across the border to New York to find him. Along the way, Fernando learns what it means to be undocumented in America — encountering at turns an indifferent bureaucracy and a supportive group of fellow immigrants who help guide him through his quixotic mission to bring his family back together.
Now a major motion picture!
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The 2019 film “Windows on the World” is a fictional account of just such a family. Given that the film has yet to receive general distribution, “Windows” presents the irony of being an invisible film about invisible people. On Wednesday, March 4, the Petaluma Film Alliance will screen the independent movie with writer-producer Robert Mailer Anderson and composer David Russo in attendance.
“The film was inspired by a photo essay I saw in the New York Times on undocumented workers killed in the buildings,” said Anderson, “people from Guatemala, Algeria, all over. And I thought, ‘Wow, to not even exist, officially. To have no agency whatever. This is a story we should tell.’ ”
Andersons’ co-writer was his cousin Zach Anderson, with whom he had written the screenplay for their first film, “Pig Hunt,” a 2007 sci-fi horror thriller.
“We come from a big labor background, so the plight of these workers struck home. These victims were the ones who do the work yet are overlooked,” he said. Anderson’s father created the first teachers’ union in Marin County. His grandmother is half Mexican.
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Big choruses. Big beats. And most of all, big ballads — big yearning ballads and big inspirational ballads.
That’s what you’ll find in the 75 songs that qualified in this year’s race for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The Academy used to release its annual list of eligible songs, but it halted that practice last year, when it instituted a 15-film shortlist in the category for the first time. But TheWrap obtained this year’s list of eligible songs and listened to every one of them.
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This evening the tenth annual Loft Film Fest begins an eight-day celebration of 47 independent, foreign and classic films. The fest opens with a likely Oscar contender, “The Two Popes,” and closes with Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” recipient of the Palme d’Or at Cannes last May.
Special guests include the forceful actor and Academy Award nominee Edward James Olmos and versatile cinema personality Illeana Douglas. Both will receive the Lofty Achievement Award for 2019.
“He’s iconic, and he’s an activist,” said the Loft festival’s executive director Peggy Johnson. Olmos’ career includes “Stand and Deliver,” “Zoot Suit,” “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez,” “American Me.” “Mi Familia” and “Selena.”
As timely as tomorrow is Olmos in his new film, “Windows on the World.” He plays Balthazar, an undocumented Mexican immigrant working at the famed Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center when it was attacked on 9/11.
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The famed actor spoke at TheWrap’s Screening Series alongside his son, Michael, who directed the movie, and screenwriter Robert Mailer Anderson.
Edward James Olmos has appeared in many films that explore what it means to be Mexican in America, but “Windows on the World” is one that he believes is truly special.
“I’ve done some really great pieces of story that I’ve had great passion for, and this is right there with him. I can’t believe that we got this on the screen.”
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