hi/lo film festival WATCH a TRAILER | PRESS RELEASE The online box office will close between 5 and 6 PM on the day of the show after which time tickets may be purchased at the door. Saturday, August 12th, 2006 8:30 - Live Music by Bach in Unison (#music) 9:00 - Showtime TRT: 1:30:00 On the East River at Solar One (@ 23rd St), just north of Stuyvesant Cove Park, Manhattan | DIRECTIONS The show will go on rain or shine, so bring an umbrella. hi/lo film festival: Why $40 million can kill a good idea. Rooftop Films has been working with hi/lo since 1999, and are always thrilled to screen their unique blend of comic absurdities, creative animations and pithy documentaries. Originally organized in 1997 by the San Francisco production company and comedy collective Killing My Lobster, the hi/lo film festival has evolved into a major West Coast showcase for independent low-budget film makers. The fest runs in the Haight's historic Brava Theater Center and Oakland's pizza & pub Parkway Theater for four nights of shorts, docs, narratives, experimentals and animations. Now in its ninth year, the hi/lo film festival continues to prove that big imaginations are more important than fat wallets. Films featured range from animations, short narratives and abstract imagistic explorations to micro-features, documentaries, and uncategorizable creations. Though in most cases they are as different and distinct as night and day, the films all belong in the same festival. They are high concept works made on minimal budgets that place ideas and creativity over imitation and slickness and each, in its own way, proves that talented, dedicated people can bring their visions to the big screen. THE FILMS: Profiles in Science (Wes Kim | Seattle, WA | 6:00 | 8MM) Figuring there needs to be a scientific explanation for all natural phenomena this mockumentarist trains his camera on missing socks and couch potatoes. Pretty Things - 'Straight for a Minute' (Michael Lucid | Hollywood, CA | 3:00 | DV) For those times when gay guys need to go undercover, it's handy to have this instructional music video. Backseat Bingo (Liz Blazer | Glendale, CA | 6:00 | Animation) This illustrated documentary throws the spotlight on an array of aging horn dogs grappling with the crisis of mortality. b-alles (Marina Gioti | Athens, Greece | 2:00 | 35MM) A 1970s commercial hyping the fun you'll have playing catch on the beach is recut and rescored courtesy of the Dead Kennedys to create a very different sort of advertisement. Bartholomew's Song (Allison Welch, Lowell Frank & Destin Cretton | San Diego, CA | 11:00) | Super 16) In a low-rent dystopia life has been reduced to the mindless stamping out of luxury items of the most useless sort. But in the spirit of Brazil and a Brave New World one automaton begins to sing his own song to heart-breaking, if predictable, effect. Honeycut: "Tough Kid" (Arno Salters | Berkeley, CA | 2:00 | DV) Cardboard cityscapes and really dizzy rockers go for a spin in this revolutionary music video. A Bad Hair Day (Meesoo Lee | Vancouver, BC | 7:00 | Mini-DV) Echoing the Fresh Prince's pronouncement that parents just don't understand, a filmmaker visits his parents in Seoul for a week and fights a perennial battle pitting his own scruffy-doo against his father's perm. Lift Off (Terri Timely | Berkeley, CA | 0:50 | 16MM) An interstellar flip-book adventure takes off and travels the universe without ever leaving a restaurant counter. Afloat (Erin Hudson | Palo Alto, CA | 6:00 | 16MM) A mesmerizing documentary featuring geriatrics and the swimming pools they love. In between the slow-moving walks through water creep heady thoughts about our own limited time in the pool of life. Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot (David Chai | San Jose, CA | 7:00 | Animation) A crash course in how to make lemonade out of lemons, or, in this case, how to repurpose clumsiness for good and not evil. Let's Start Again (Charlie Tweed | London ,UK | 7:00 | Mini-DV) If the Unabomber had a British sense of humor he might look like this...of course he'd also have to be about 16 and a lot more creative. Animals of the forests beware! Sprout and the Bean (Terri Timely | Berkeley, CA | 3:00 | 35MM) Music video. By matching the infectious and mercurial sounds made entirely from Joanna Newsom's voice and her harp to swirling and stunningly imaginative imagery the Terri Timely crew have done for Nevada City's Newsom what Chris Cunningham has done for Bjork, (with a much smaller budget of course!). Tales of mere existence (Lev | San Francisco, CA | 4:00 | Animation) Bay Area cartoonist and satirist Lev returns to hilo with a new episode in his life-long chronicle of the socially awkward, the perpetually uncoordinated, and the sympathetically perplexed. Hello, Thanks (Andrew Blubaugh | Portland, OR | 8:00 | Super 16) Self-portraits are the hardest to draw and distilling your identity and what you want out of life into a personal ad is even harder, but one man and his camera still give it a shot. Vienna in the Desert (Wago Kreider | San Francisco, CA | 5:00 | Mini-DV) Another hilo veteran ("House" - 2002) composes a new film out of a most seductively tranquil seaside and the dialogue of a lover's quarrel from a vintage Hollywood movie. Pretty Things - 'Always a bad girl' (Michael Lucid | Hollywood, CA | 3:00 | DV) The LA sketch comedy-music-film-group recounts a brief history of famous bad girls, replete with snappy lyrics and catchy dance moves. If this isn't edutainment we don't know what is. Surrounded (David Politzer | Brooklyn, NY | 4:00 | Mini-DV) The returning hilo filmmaker ("I Can Say It" - 2005) is woken in the middle of the night and while it takes him a moment or two to get his gear together the calls of the wild are well-recorded for our benefit. Snakeman (John Inglis | PascoeVale, Australia | 7:00 | Mini-DV) A grizzly Australian snake-owner and the world's sissiest camera man square off in what could be the world­s worst idea for a short film. This is the film the folks at Animal Planet don't want you to even think about. Space Diamonds: the Philosophy of JD "Junior" Moore (Curtis Craven | Austin, TX | 13:00 | Mini-DV) The hilo and Rooftop filmmaker returns (Found Artist: Gary Crom) with another portrait of an odd man and his passionate pursuit of the esoteric. In this case JD "Junior" Moore spends his time sifting the Florida dirt in search of meterorite fragments to take home and catalog, or lose in the shag-carpet as the case may be. THE MUSIC: Back In Unison: Rob Moose (guitar, fiddle) and Dana Lyn (cello) play unique modern updates on work by the classic composer.