Free Screenings this Summer at Rooftop!

What would summer in New York City be without free outdoor movie screenings?

Here at Rooftop Films we strive to bring New Yorkers quality movies and our first FREE screening is coming up next weekend. Together with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Forest City Ratner, we will be presenting Reuben Atlas’s Brothers Hypnotic on Friday May 17th. The free show will feature a rockin’ dance party leading up to the film, and a live performance by the brothers themselves directly afterwards.

In addition, Rooftop Films is teaming up with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to present two special sneak preview screenings. On June 8th, the two organizations will present a free screening of the widely anticipated “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” RADiUS-TWC’s hit film which premiered at Sundance. Following the screening there will be a live performance by Darlene Love, one of the main subjects of the film, and a Q&A with the director Morgan Neville. On July 20th, Rooftop and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will partner again to present Cinedigm’s “Short Term 12”, the feature film debut of Destin Cretton. Cretton was a 2010 Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship winner, and “Short Term 12” went on to win the 2013 SXSW Grand Jury Award in March.

These are just a few of the many free screenings Rooftop Films will be bringing you this summer. Check out our full lineup below!

Friday, May 17
Brothers Hypnotic
(Dir. Reuben Atlas) NY Premiere
For the eight members of the electrifying Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, brotherhood is more than an idea, it’s a literal fact, and music is more than something they play. It’s a way of life. Filmmaker Reuben Atlas will be in attendance to introduce the film and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble will perform live following the screening.
Venue: Outdoors at MetroTech Commons, Bridge Street & Johnson Street, Downtown Brooklyn

Saturday, June 8
Twenty Feet From Stardom
(Dir. Morgan Neville)
Presented in partnership with the Academy’s Oscars Outdoors series.
Meet the unsung heroes behind the greatest music of our time. Special performance by film’s subject Darlene Love. Courtesy of RADiUS-TWC.
Venue: Open Road Rooftop, 350 Grand Street, Lower East Side

Wednesday, June 12
Interface Innovation
(Short Films)
A collection of new short films featuring datamoshed moments and postmodem lifestyles, accompanied by new interactive works from the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center and the CITE Game Innovation Lab, both at NYU-Poly.
Venue: Outdoors at MetroTech Commons, Bridge Street & Johnson Street, Downtown Brooklyn

Tuesday, June 18
The Central Park Five
(Dir. Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, Dave McMahon)
Presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, “The Central Park Five” tells the story of how five lives were upended by the rush to judgment by police, a sensationalist media and a devastating miscarriage of justice. Courtesy of Florentine Films.
Venue: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 2nd Ave & E 47th St, Manhattan

Thursday, June 20
Love Letter to the Fog / The Biggest-Smallest
(Live Documentary Performance by Sam Green)
Rooftop and River to River present Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green, teaming up with two local musical outfits, the Quavers and yMusic, to create a night of outdoor music and live cinema.
Venue: Pier 15, John Street and the East River, Financial District

Tuesday, June 25
The Genius of Marian
(Dir. Banker White, Anna Fitch
Presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
An intimate family portrait that explores the tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease, the power of art and the meaning of family. “The Genius of Marian” follows Pam White in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease as her son, the filmmaker, documents her struggle to hang on to a sense of self.
Venue: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 2nd Ave & E 47th St, Manhattan

Tuesday, July 2
WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL
(Dir. Ben Nabors)
Presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
William Kamkwamba, a young Malawian, builds a power-generating windmill from junk parts to rescue his family from famine, transforming his life and catapulting him on to the world stage. His fame and success lead him to new opportunities and complex choices about his future, distancing him from the life he once knew.
Venue: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 2nd Ave & E 47th St, Manhattan

Wednesday, July 3
Our Nixon
(Dir. Penny Lane)
Presented with Socrates Sculpture Park.
Throughout Richard Nixon’s presidency, three of his top White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with Super 8 home movie cameras. Young, idealistic and dedicated, they had no idea that a few years later they’d all be in prison. “Our Nixon” is an all-archival documentary presenting those home movies for the first time, along with other rare footage, creating an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency as never seen before. Courtesy of Cinedigm.
Venue: The lawn in Socrates Sculpture Park, 3134 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City

Monday, July 8
Bending Steel
(Dir. David Carroll, produced by Ryan Scafuro)
A remarkable and intimate documentary exploring the lost art of the old time strongman, and one man’s struggle to overcome limitations of body and mind. Featuring a live performance by professional strongmen from the movie prior to the film.
Venue: The Beach in Coney Island, W 12th and the beach, right near Luna Park

Saturday, July 13
Brasslands
(Dir. Meerkat Media Collective) NY Premiere
Presented by Rooftop Films and Arts Brookfield.
Devoted American musicians, Serbian brass heavyweights, and a Gypsy trumpet master collide at the world’s largest trumpet festival.
Venue: Brookfield Place (formerly World Financial Center), 220 Vesey Street (between West Street and the Hudson River), Financial District

Saturday, July 20
Short Term 12
(Dir. Destin Daniel Cretton)
Presented in partnership with the Academy’s Oscars Outdoors series.
“Short Term 12” follows Grace (Brie Larson), a young supervisor at a foster-care facility, as she looks after the teens in her charge and reckons with her own troubled past. Courtesy of Cinedigm.
Venue: The roof of the Old American Can Factory, 232 Third Street, Gowanus/Park Slope

Wednesday, July 31
Domestic
(Dir. Adrian Sitaru) NY Premiere
Presented with Socrates Sculpture Park.
Wonderfully surreal, painfully real, this is the story of children, adults and animals who live together trying to have a better life, but sometimes death comes unexpectedly. In the bittersweet comedy “Domestic” it is all about us, people who eat the animals that they love and the animals that love people unconditionally.
Venue: The lawn in Socrates Sculpture Park, 3134 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City

Friday, August 2
North of South, West of East
(Dir. Meredith Danluck) NY Premiere
Presented with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Forest City Ratner.
The desire to be entertained becomes hyper-realized as Meredith Danluck’s multi-screen installation creates a fully immersive non-linear cinema experience in MetroTech commons. The audience will sit at the center of the viewing space, surrounded on all four sides by screens as all the separate channels of the film play simultaneously, each storyline competing for the audience’s attention. A one-of-a-kind cinema-going experience, North of South, West of East takes the chronic existential crisis that is the American identity and turns it inside out, laying the classic components of comedy, thrill, violence, love and death neatly side by side, all at once.
Venue: Outdoors at MetroTech Commons, Bridge Street & Johnson Street, Downtown Brooklyn