ROOFTOP FILMS AND EASTERN EFFECTS
ANNOUNCE EQUIPMENT GRANT RECIPIENT

By Rooftop Films on 09/04/2008

Lee Isaac Chung (director of the acclaimed Munyurangabo, which screened at Rooftop on August 23) will receive a fully-loaded lighting and grip package for 30 days for his feature narrative Lucky Life.

Full details can be found at www.rooftopfilms.com/produce.html and www.easterneffects.com

Rooftop Films is committed to helping emerging filmmakers in a variety of ways, from providing large and diverse audiences for underexposed films at our screenings and online, to helping artists produce new films through the Rooftop Filmmakers' Fund. In 2008, Rooftop Films and Eastern Effects, a film equipment rental house in Brooklyn, inaugurated an Equipment Grant, lending one Rooftop alumni filmmaker a two-ton lighting and grip package for 30 days, to be used on a feature-length film. Dozens of excellent filmmakers submitted their treatments and screenplays in the hopes of receiving the package, valued at approximately at $15,000.

We are now pleased to announce that Lee Isaac Chung will be the recipient of the 2008 Rooftop Films and Eastern Effects Equipment Grant. Chung screened his short film Sex and Coffee at Rooftop in 2006, and will use the grant for a drama entitled Lucky Life, about four friends on a poignant road trip. Mark and Karen are preparing for the birth of their first child, while Jason is coping with his recent diagnosis with terminal cancer. A meditation on life, death and spirituality, Chung says the film, which will begin production in September, was inspired by his trips to Spanish cathedrals, and the revelation of "cinema as a medium for creating spiritual space." The title comes from a book of poetry by Gerald Stern: "Lucky life isn't one long string of horrors / and there are moments of peace, and pleasure, as I lie in between the blows."

Lucky Life will be Chung's second feature film, following on the tremendous success of his debut Munyurangabo, which screened festivals including Berlin, Toronto, and Cannes, where Variety praised the film as "flat-out, the discovery of this year's Un Certain Regard [section]."

Munyurangabo is a stunning neo-realist drama about revenge and friendship in post-genocide Rwanda. The debut feature from the 2008 recipient of the Rooftop Films and Eastern Effects Equipment Grant screened at Rooftop Films on Saturday, August 23, at the Old American Can Factory, in Gowanus (near Park Slope), Brooklyn. For more information, check out Munyurangabo.