I Watch Films, You Can Too! They’re back! Alumni Filmmakers Part 1

My name is Dominic and I’m the Film Programmer here at Rooftop. I have the awesome job of watching and finding films and putting together the events and programs for the Summer Series. With so many films and events this summer it can be difficult to find paths through our programming. I’ll be devoting a weekly blog post to themes in our films to help guide your viewing.

This week, I want to talk about the filmmakers whose work we loved so much that we invited them back with a new film or, as is the case with Living Stars, the same film twice!

From the director of the Oscar®-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, which we showed here at Rooftop in 2014, comes the new film The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, which tells the extraordinary story of the renowned international musical collective created by legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Our annual program of startling cinematic spectacles includes new works by a number of old friends. Dirt was made by Darius Clark Monroe whose short film, Train, we first showed in 2011 and will show again this summer in conjunction with Vimeo before a program of retrospective shorts. Look for more on that event soon! The program also includes new work by Jennifer Reeder who brought her film A Million Miles Away to the trapped program last year and Ham Heads by Efrén Hernández whose film, Master Muscles was part of 2014’s opening night program.

Living Stars returns! No script, no plot, just music and gyrating bodies—from a precocious body popping prodigy to a cross-dressing pizza delivery guy and even a Spice Girls loving Gaucho—Living Stars is a sixty minute dance party and everyone’s invited! Seriously, this event will be a big free dance along or dance-oke with dance ambassador, Kristin Sudeikis!

Rising rents and family ties collide in a changing south Brooklyn, in Little Men, the latest from Ira Sachs who brought his short Last Address to New York Nonfiction in 2010.

Check back later this week when I’ll highlight the stranger than fiction stories of the 2016 Summer Series.

-Dom