Since 2005, Rooftop Films has been proud to collaborate with the enchanting Rural Route Film Festival, an urban fest dedicated to showing the greener side of life. We've hosted selections from Rural Route during our Summer Series, and collaborated on screenings at their festival. Now Co-Founder Alan Webber is preparing to embark on a year-long, world wide Rural Route tour--The Year of the Nomad--jetsetting to major cities and strolling down country lanes to find and show the world's most idyllic cinema.

This weekend, catch this amazing festival one last time in NYC!

THE RURAL ROUTE FILM FESTIVAL
Friday-Sunday, October 17-19
at Anthology Film Archives
& Scandinavia House

FREE PBR
FREE ORGANIC VALLEY STRING CHEESE
FREE BOOKS FROM LONELY PLANET

Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. (@ 38th St.)
ickets available by phone (212) 847-9737
http://www.scandinaviahouse.org/

Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave. (@ 2nd St.)
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

SCHEDULE - ANTHOLOGY
Fri., Oct. 17 @ 7:30PM
& Sat., Oct. 18 @ 8:30PM
"Best of Rural Route Short Films"
DVD Launch Party
The world premiere of Rural Route's new "Best of" dvd! Join Rural Route as we launch the new DVD that will sail the seven seas on the worldwide "Nomad" Tour throughout 2009 (subtitled in Spanish & French). Come pick up your own copy! The program features 13 of the very best shorts from 5 years of Rural Route. This includes award-winning documentaries, experimental films, narratives, and music videos. Stories about bear hunters, Siberian folk artists, dental farmers, dancing tractors, and racing lawnmowers! Movies from the driest desert, the snowiest mountains, the greenest fields, and more!

Fri., Oct. 17 @ 9:30PM
"Big Dead Place" - Films from Antarctica by Nicholas Johnson
While periodically working on contract as a garbageman in Antarctica, Nicholas Johnson has been writing and making short films about his time on the ice. Come witness an insider's view on the bizarre culture and mesmerizing scenery of the famed McMurdo Research Station, which Werner Herzog visited in his most recent "Encounters at the End of the World".

Sat., Oct. 18 @ 6:30PM
"Arica Nativa" - Freak Films From the Chilean Andes
Rural Route's first stop on the "Nomad" Tour will be in Arica, Chile, surrounded by the Atacoma Desert (the driest place in the world). This program of films comes from our sister rural festival in Arica, and features a fascinating, experimental look into indigenous culture in the Andes.

Sun., Oct. 19 @ 4:30PM
"Go Organic!" - Healthy Foods Short Film Program
You are what you eat...so you'd better start paying attention to what exactly that is! These short selections from RR's popular new wave agricultural program provide a refreshing education on the current state of farming, and point out positive sustainable and organic practices from the Midwest to Cuba that you can take part in.

Sun., Oct. 19 @ 6:30PM
"Rural Kiwi" - Films From the New Zealand Film Archive
Rural Route also has a scheduled stop in Wellington, NZ in March of 2009. This program of films has been co-curated by Mark Williams of the New Zealand Film Archive. This program features a fun, campy farm education film from the 50s, a short about a hunter who is haunted by dead animals, and a modern Maori race car demolition derby!

SCHEDULE - SCANDINAVIA HOUSE
Saturday, October 18, 3PM
"That Special Summer" ("Kid Svensk") (Finland, Sweden)
Directed by Nanna Huolman, 2007. This award-winning film explores the extreme highs and lows of a Finnish girl growing up in 1980s Sweden. Headstrong 12-year-old Kirsi, known as Kid, has assimilated perfectly into school life in Gothenburg, but her widowed mother, Ester, lives in a Finnish cocoon, refusing to learn Swedish or partake in the local culture. When Ester decides to start a restaurant back in Finland with the help of an old beau, Kid becomes increasingly agitated, lashing out in protest. In the end, this touching drama portrays a girl not only coming to grips with a difficult mother/daughter relationship and the meaning of "home," but also her foray into first love. 85 min. Presented by the Consulate General of Finland & the Consulate General of Sweden.

By Rooftop Films in Documentary, Drama, Environmental Films, Personal Narrative, Rooftop Filmmakers, Rooftop News | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (0)

Tags: Alan Webber, Anthology Film Archives, Rooftop Films, Rural Route Film Festival, Scandanavia House, Year of the Nomad

Diverse crowds flock to Rooftop

FRIDAY
This past weekend at Rooftop Films highlighted why diversity matters, and how much fun it is when it works. Friday, we were back on the roof of El Museo Del Barrio, in East Harlem. In 2007, Rooftop hosted the first ever public screenings on the roof, and this year, even though the museum is closed for renovations, we'll be hosting three screenings on their gorgeous roof, overlooking Central Park on 104th Street and 5th Ave.

Friday's show began with a brilliant performance by Yerbabuena. It can be hard to create a full sound when on you're on the roof of the tallest building around, but this local Puerto Rican band has a dozen members and it felt like the whole city had to be catching their infectious rhythms and astounding harmonics. Singing in Spanish and English, the dynamic lead singer had the aisles packed with both devoted and newly converted fans, dancing and singing along.

We showed two 40-minute documentaries about the melancholy joy of life in contemporary Latin America. The first was Alguna Triseteza, a heartbreaking and gorgeous film essay about the Peruvian psyche, mixing pride and defeatism, a devotion to hard-work and a pervading sense of futility, a joy in little pleasures and a dream for a eventual moment of glory. That film contrasted rather remarkably with La Corona, the Academy-Award nominated documentary about a beauty pageant in a women's prison in Colombia--a remarkably upbeat and celebratory film, given the women's circumstances.

Following the screening, at the reception with free drinks courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner , I had the pleasure of talking to local City Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito , who has helped support Rooftop Films through The Manhattan Delegation, and who had been sitting in the front row, singing along to Yerbabuena and cheering along the pageant contestants. I was also approached by people from Peru and Colombia, who had loved the screening. It's such a thrill when we can bring out such mixed crowds, to sing and dance, watch movies and share cultures, and down a beer together afterward.

UP WITH ME--Trailer

The next Rooftop Films screenings at El Museo will be on August 8 and September 6. Rooftop's August/July schedule will be officially announced next week, but I can tell you that the August show will be Up With Me, a really stunning narrative film set in the neighborhood, written by and starring local teenagers. That promises to be an amazing show, as last year we screened a local film--Hard Road Home--and the enthusiasm of the local audience was over-whelming.

SATURDAY
On the roof of our home base, The Old American Can Factory, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, we presented the New York premiere of Michael Chandler's documentary Knee Deep, a continuation of Rooftop Films and XO Projects' INDUSTRIANCE series--programs about the changing landscape in industry, architecture, agriculture, and the ways these changes affect individual lives. Knee Deep is the true story of a young man, Josh Osborne, who shot his own mother when she tried to sell the family farm. That's obviously a pretty extreme reaction to real estate development, but perhaps an understandable one, and the power of the film is that as an audience member, I think you come to sympathize with Josh. There's not a lot of farming in Brooklyn, but unscrupulous development has certainly put an end to myriad manufacturing jobs, and forced thousands of people from their family homes. So while the film is a unique look at small town, rural life, and a fascinating and surprisingly fun personal story, it's also a film with themes that are relevant here in New York City.

One could tell that this crowd was pretty mixed, too, with folks from NYC and from New England. One audience member remarked during the Q & A that you could tell who the Mainers in the crowd were by who laughed at the line about "Skitters," a line my city mind didn't quite grasp, but which refers to a rig used in Maine to move logs. Another New Yorker asked how the film had been received in the Maine, and Chandler said screenings there have been packed and DVD sales have been brisk. So it was another night of harmony, delight, and discourse, as a strange but identifiable slice of country life came to the city at Rooftop Films.

P.S. If that kind of interaction intrigues you, come check out the July 18 Rural Route Films program of short films highlighting the rougher side of rural life.

* * *
Join Rooftop Films on www.twitter.com/rooftopfilms for live updates from the shows. Updates about tickets, the weather, filmmaker attendance, after-parties, and the vibe on the scene.

By Rooftop Films in Environmental Films, Personal Narrative, Rooftop Filmmakers, Rooftop Weekend Recap | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (0)

Tags: Alguna Tristeza, August 8th Show, City Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, Columbia, diversity, documentary, East Harlem, El Museo Del Barrio, Hard Road Home, Industriance series, July 11th Show, July 12th Show, Knee Deep, La Corona, Manhattan Delegation, Michael Chandler, New England, Old American Can Factory, Radeberger Pilsner, Rural Route, September 6th Show, Sold Out, Up With Me, Women, XO Projects, Yerbabuena

For those of you who know don't know much (or anything) about Rooftop Films, here is a brief introduction:

Rooftop Films is a non-profit film festival and production collective that has been screening and producing independent films since 1997. We are most famous for our annual Summer Series, a summer-long outdoor film festival that features more than 35 screenings each year. All of our summer screenings take place in stunning outdoor locations--either on rooftop or in parks, along piers, or in other scenic outdoor locations all over New York City (and occasionally beyond). We have screened more than 1,500 films over the last twelve years, and the work we show includes everything from award-winning films and world premieres by established filmmakers, to home videos by amateur and part-time film enthusiasts.

Though we are best known for our spectacular outdoor shows, Rooftop Films is more than just a festival--we are a film community. We believe that we have a responsibility to bring filmmakers, artists and musicians together with one another and with our audiences, and we believe that independent films flourish when they get out of the indie-plexes and art-house theaters and work their way into the lives and communities of people all over the world.

Of course, that is why we show films outdoors--but that is also why we are so excited to have partnered with IFC.com to bring many of our favorite short films to the internet. Too many fantastic short films never reach the audience they deserve, and even the best and luckiest of them tend to make their way through the film festival circuit and then disappear from the public eye completely. By partnering with IFC.com, Rooftop Films can keep these films alive and bring them to thousands of new people who don't get the chance to see them at festivals.

There is much talk about how well-suited the internet is for showing short films, but so many of the internet video portals are filled with clips from TV shows and battles between wildebeests and lions. Of course, we love some of those clips, too, but the Rooftop Films page offers a quality, curated alternative to the anarchy of YouTube. We receive more than 2,000 submissions every year, and all of the films we select for IFC.com are chosen from the most extraordinary works in our library of shorts, so these films are truly the best of the best. Our goal is to create a virtual place where viewers can peruse hundreds of films in all different genres so that they can get a sense of the truly ground-breaking work being done all over the world.

And now that we also have a blog on IFC.com, the information doesn't just have to flow one way. All year long, we will be posting interviews and other bits of information about the films we select, and we highly encourage you all to respond with comments and questions for us and for the filmmakers who have made these films. We'll answer your queries, and create an online community that captures the enthusiastic spirit of our live shows.

We'll be posting 100 films between now and the end of 2008--3 a week, every week--so bookmark the page and check back in daily to watch great films and read about all of the things going on with our festival and in the indie-film world.

Rooftop Films--Underground Movies Outdoors and Online.
Check out www.rooftopfilms.com for more information about our shows and other programs.

By Rooftop Films in About Rooftop Films and This Blog, Animation, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Environmental Films, Home Movies, Personal Narrative, Political Films, Rooftop Filmmakers, Rooftop Music, Rooftop News, Watch Short Films | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (4)

Tags: 2008 Summer Series, Rooftop Films, Underground Movies Outdoors, Watch Short Films