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ROOFTOP FILMS and VERIZON FIOS present 

Short films and video about moments in time, capturing and imagining what it felt like to be there. 

OPEN BAR AFTER PARTY FOLLOWING THE SCREENING FOR ALL IN ATTENDANCE

   

Venue: On the lawn of Automotive High School Address: 50 Bedford Ave. @ North 13th St. (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) 

Directions: L to Bedford Ave. or G to Nassau Ave. 

Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location 

8:00PM: Doors open 

8:30PM: Live music presented by Sound Fix Records 

9:00PM: Films 

10:30PM: Filmmaker Q & A 

11:30PM-1:00AM: After-party: Open Bar at Matchless (557 Manhattan Ave. @ Driggs) Courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner

Tickets: $9 at the door or online

Presented in partnership with: Cinereach, New York magazine, City Council Member David Yassky & Automotive High School

Every year Rooftop hosts a program of Home Movies--discovering the forgotten, unmediated moments of people's lives, unfiltered and as they live them. The films reveal textures, patterns, feelings that might go unnoticed, fleeting incidents that would otherwise pass without thought, but when captured on film or video provide an insight into the lives captured, or those recording.

This year's program includes a wide range of techniques and storytelling strategies, displaying the varied forms that biographical documentary (and pseudo-documentary) can take. Filmmakers parse through mysteriously painful childhood memories (Bloomfield or a Childhood Memory; My Rabbit Hoppy); trace their family history (Ten for Grandpa); work through their issues relating to failed romances and short-lived affairs (Men With Girlfriends Later; I Slept With a Cookie Monster); and capture the fleeting impact of politics on the moments of their lives (Hotel Diaries). The details change and the narrative devices are diverse, but the goal of each film remains the same: to express through film or video what happened in that moment, what it meant to the filmmaker, what it felt like to be there.

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Rooftop Films and WNYC's The Brian Lehrer show are proud to share a similar ethos: we love New York, baseball, arts, bicycling, and political issues explored through personal stories. We both value populist media, made by, reported on and respecting the views of everyday people and experts alike. Here at Rooftop, we have a tremendous respect for Brian Lehrer's journalism, and are thrilled to be collaborating with his show on a new crowdsourcing-style reporting contest. 

The contest asks people to tell us your story, or report on what you see, for an online project that includes your local stories of economic activity in the New York City area--jobs lost or found, stores opening or closing, good deals on rent, whatever you find. The Brian Lehrer Show (and now Rooftop Films) want to tell this complex story with the help of your calls, photographs, video and writing. What matters is that we get YOUR stories about the economy from the places you are familiar with.

We will choose submissions to air on the show each week so our listeners can hear what you have noticed as well. Videos will be online, and finalists will receive a WNYC gift bag and an appearance before a live audience to screen the winning video with Brian Lehrer in the new Jerome L. Greene performance space. 

The grand prize winner will receive a screening at Rooftop Films.

INSTRUCTIONS
As you plan your video, consider our Uncommon Economic Indicator categories: housing, employment, behavior, commerce, swindlers or bright spots. On the submission form, enter your name and email (in case we need to contact you), assign a category and add a title. Because your submission can appear on our map, make a note of where you shoot and enter the address. After you upload your video to YouTube (never did that? get help here) an icon will appear on our map. Click there to see your video, or you may also view it as an entry in our Your Uncommon Economic Indicators 2009 Video Contest.

Contest Period: The Brian Lehrer Show's Uncommon Economic Indicators video contest begins at 10:00:01 a.m. Eastern Time on May 26, 2009 and ends at 11:59:59 a.m. ET on June 21, 2009.

Prize: The winning video will be screened this summer by Rooftop Films. Finalists will receive a WNYC gift bag and an appearance before a live audience to screen the winning video with Brian Lehrer in the new Jerome L. Greene performance space.

Requirements: Add your YouTube video to the WNYC Group, complete the contact information form and enter the video URL on Your Uncommon Economic Indicators.

Your video should be no longer than one-minute and should show your take on an Uncommon Economic Indicator. You get extra points during the judging if one of these 6 category icons from our project appears somewhere in your shot:

+ Behavior--Piggy Bank
+ Bright Spots--Sunshine
+ Commerce--Bank
+ Employment--Handshake
+ Housing--A white house
+ Swindlers--Skull & Crossbones

Tips: What Makes a Better Video?

+ A steady hand. If you don't have a tri-pod, do all you can to support your arm (keep it close to your body, support with other hand, short takes).
+ Lighting matters! If you don't have good light, find some or shoot at a different time.
+ Sound matters! Be aware of the mic on your camera and be sure to get close if you conduct an interview.
+ Have fun!

Please keep your video under one minute. Don't forget a title!

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This Saturday, May 23, on the roof of new venue Brooklyn Tech High School (Ft. Greene), at our "Dangerous Docs" show, we'll be screening Chop Off, a new film by underground film legend MM Serra. Serra has run the Filmmakers Co-Op for decades, keeping a hold of one of the world most important archives of avant garde cinema. 

Chop Off, her latest film, which played at Sundance earlier this year, is about an amputation performance artist. Earlier this week, our main man at Brooklyn Tech, he accidentally cut off one of his fingers. 

What other film festival would bring you a pairing like that? 

(Though just wait till you catch the live stunt at the Strongman screening!) 

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We began the Summer as we often do, with a show called "This Is What We Mean By Short Films," highlighting the shorts that define the genre: daring films that aren't merely abbreviated features, but have their own unique means of expression. In particular, we put together a show about people (and animals, and tiny pixel creatures) coming together, seeking companionship and love. 

It was the first completely gorgeous day in New York in . . . I don't know . . . nine months? Felt that way. And people were eager to be outside. 800 advance tickets were sold out by Wednesday, but hundreds more lined up before 7pm door sales began, and the total number of exuberant audience members well exceeded 1,000. It was a boisterous but well-behaved crowd, and all the hard work our staff put in the weeks prior planning paid off brilliantly. We set up three screens on the sprawling roof, a technical feat that boggles my mind, some 13 years after that first ever Rooftop screening, when I balanced on a steam pipe to hold the 16mm reels on the spool as the wind tried to knock them off. Equally impressive was the crowd-management, as people filed into the various spaces with a finely tuned chaos. 

On this particular roof, at New Design High School, there are always more butts than chairs, and folks have to make do like at other outdoor screenings: bring a blanket or find a perch. (People should also check out some of our other, more secretive venues, particularly at Brooklyn Tech, The Old American Can Factory, and Automotive High School, where chair demand is lower and/or grass is growing.) 

Still, as evinced by Ryan Muir's super cool photos of the show (courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan), with the graffiti-covered walls, skate park apparatus, glowing screens, and people chilling in all sorts of places, there's a wild, old-school NYC joy in the disorderly chair-less vibe. It was an enthusiastic start to what promises to be a dynamic year for Rooftop Films. 

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