Entries tagged with “Slamdance” from Rooftop Films Blog

For some people, it takes a few days to acclimate to the cold and the altitude of Park City. For me, it takes a few days to acclimate to "normal" life after Sundance and Slamdance. I wake up panicked that I've slept through some 8:30am screening. I walk down a busy street confused as to why I haven't run into half a dozen film-world friends. I take a few seconds to think about something other than cinema and feel like I'm slacking off.

But we've been back from the Park City fests for a week now, and I think I'm starting to "recover" from all the amazing movies, fantastic friends, and dreamy days in dark theaters. It's exhausting, but it's a blast. I kept a little diary this year of everything I did out there, which was pretty crazy. I won't bore you with the details, but in 8 days I saw 27 features and a bunch of short films, had conversations with 140 different people, and spent half a day snowboarding (left). What a trip.

To read about as many of the films as Dan and I could stay awake at night to write about, scroll down through the January archives. We really loved the slate out there this year, as we found a ton of films that were right up Rooftop's alley--straightforward films that focused more on telling great personal stories instead of fancy filmmaking frills. I hope our reviews are entertaining and interesting, and provide some insight into these films and the people behind them. And if you agree, or don't, leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Look out for our SXSW coverage in March!

This is a blog so I can be personal, right? Ok. When I was 17 years old, I bicycled across America. From Sandy Hook, NJ to Florence, OR. I carried all my own gear--clothes, tent, food. Camped out wherever. I had a lot of minor adventures--fell asleep under a bridge on train tracks in Missouri during a lightening storm; drank water from a hose on the lawn of a nuclear power plant after a 112 mile day through the Idaho desert; got hit by a truck on purpose by two jackasses cursing me in West Virginia. But mostly it was a trip of minor observations, ephemeral feelings, and a grand struggle against boredom and exhaustion.

The goal was always the Pacific Ocean, but that final ride to the shore was crushingly anticlimactic. There was no triumphant feeling of accomplishment. No epiphany, or relief, or ecstasy. I was worn down, tired, ready to go home, and yet stasis felt ponderous. Staying in the same place for two nights for the first time in 58 days, I literally felt heavy, and depressed. It was only months later, maybe even years later, that I started to sense and understand the journey. There's still never been any pat lesson I learned, but on the whole I can now feel, in my soul (if I can use that word), a sense who I was on that trip, across these specific lands.

Lee Kazimir's "More Shoes" is a film with a similar feeling. Kazimir was stuck in a dead end job when he heard Werner Herzog proclaim that the best way to become a better filmmaker is to walk 5,000 km alone, for example from Madrid to Kiev. And so that's what Kazimir did.

This film is lyrical, hypnotic, and deeply introspective. Although Kazimir also has a singular destination, the film blissfully lacks a linear direction: a car on a highway has a linear direction; a man on a journey like this travels in all directions at once. Kazimir meets many people, hears some fascinating stories, and has mini-adventures, but to describe any of them would limit the scope of the film. In the end the most remarkably thing about this film is the feeling of being in motion again. It's the most extraordinary feeling in the world.

Saw a great program at Slamdance today. "City of Cranes," directed by Eva Weber, is exactly the type of film I would hope for in a documentary about construction crane operators: the images are dazzling without being showy, the interviews are lovely without being precious. It tells you things you never thought about cranes, and offers curious insights into the minds of these guys--and the crane operator world is almost exclusively male; the filmmakers were unable to get an interview with the one female operator they found--people who spend countless hours alone in a little box perched hundreds of feet in the air, moving massive objects in what is potentially a very dangerous (and therefore stressful) job. There's a zen-like quality to some operator's approaches, but they stay grounded (pun intended) by innocently spying on the people of the world who would never expect to be seen from that perspective. I didn't get a chance to talk to the directors after the screening, but this could be a great film to show on the rooftops of New York City, particularly in our INDUSTRIANCE series, focusing on architecture, industry and agriculture and the ways they affect individual lives.

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When I first started watching Joanna Vasquez Arong's "Neo-Lounge," a fascinating documentary about (mostly) European expats in Beijing, my first reaction was, "I'm so glad it's not just Americans who make assholes of themselves abroad." But this film is also much more rich than that. Early on in the film, watching the generic party-hardy Euro trash and the two main characters, I recognized the deep nihilism that everyone was exhibiting in the form of decadence. Drunken partying always indicates a certain amount of abandon, a willful amount of self-destruction, an escape. But in the case of the Expat, you can sense a deeper desire for self-erasure. Arong's intricately crafted film is a passionate and intelligent exploration of that pathos.

As the film progresses, two characters come to the foreground. Leonardo Griglié is a mysteriously wealthy middle aged Italian impresario, who quite reminded me of Boris Yeltsin (including his penchants for vodka and tanks). Leo has a magnificent house stuffed to the gills with art and artifacts, and is constantly entertaining, though he constantly complain that everything is "boring." Nothing could be worse for him than a moment of boredom, and his curious ways of filling the time are consistently hilarious. He often hires Diliana Georgieva, a young aspiring actress/model/singer from Bulgaria, to come perform at his parties. We follow the two of them as their lives twist and turn, always around the central elements of partying and performing (which both do equally with a great lack of inhibition). Slowly, the desperation and confusion in both becomes clear: that feeling of self-erasure is reified (in fascinatingly opposing ways). With Diliana, we learn of a past she ran from, secrets she's kept, and watch as she works to settle herself down in this new, boyfriend-less, Kung Fu studying, way. Leo, however, tries to clean himself up, but to do so up and leaves China for Moscow, departing still a mystery. In the Q & A, Arong told the audience that no one ever knew where Leo's money came from, or exactly who he really was.


Throughout the film, Arong's startling editing propels the characters forward in a pulsing freefall. Her sense of narrative is excellent, and her jarring edits create just the right feeling of dislocation and symbolic inevitability. Having shown Arong's "Lao Shan, Lao Yin (Old Mountains, Old Shadows)" at Rooftop last summer, I was really pleased to see her make such an accomplished debut feature.

Also of note, it's great to see a program of films made by women, still underrepresented among film directors.

The film world migration to Utah is underway, but my journey is hung-up. On my trip out here, I've run into director Gabe Rhodes (August in the Empire State, co-directed by long-time Rooftop collaborator Michael Galinsky) and video artist / Rooftop Alum Seth Price, but neither were going to Sundance. Good for them. Because meanwhile, I'm stuck in O'Hare in a snow storm with Jim Becker and the guys from Califone who are heading to Park City to play the most recent incarnation of the amazing live music/animation show they played at Rooftop with Brent Green in 2006. They're playing Friday, Sunday and Monday evening at 6:30 at the New Frontier on Main, and I highly recommend catching their show.

I was supposed to be flying from JFK to O'Hare to Salt Lake. But with this storm here in Chicago, I find myself waiting in the airport for our plane to get flight attendants. I offered to pour coffees and explain the seatbelts myself, but the airline doesn't seem to want my help.

Meanwhile, I've learned that not only is Terminal 5 at O'Hare now officially "The International Starbucks Terminal," but that there are 10 times more Starbucks at this airport than there are in all of Detroit.

I was at a grants panel recently, where a New York City government official advised us non-profits that if we wanted to find out about the potential gentrification of a neighborhood, we should call Starbucks HQ, because they had the most advanced research.

Take from those related anecdotes what you will. I'll write more about indie film soon, but all I know about Sundance this year is that it's hard to get to.