Friday, August 25th, 2006
8:30 - Live Music by ULI (Latin / Pop / Electronica click for details)
9:00 - Showtime
TRT: 1:38:35
AFTER PARTY: DRINK SPECIALS AT MATCHLESS (just a few blocks away at Manhattan Ave & Driggs)
On the lawn of Automotive High School | DIRECTIONS
50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Home Movies
Sometimes you've just got to show it like it is. Sometimes you don't want Hollywood or the TV media to filter your experiences. You want real life, straight up. You want Rooftop Films' Home Movies.
Fancy, high-concept comedies can dazzle you with layers of witticisms, but for our Home Movies program, we prefer cute puppies causing chaos (Garpenfargle), dirty children screaming in slow motion (Four Kid Tenors), and homemade time travel experiments gone awry (Time Mistake).
In-depth news exposes about breaches in the levee, government response, the aftereffects of a hurricane—all that is fascinating. And we'll relate all of it here, simply by spending the night with three brothers in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, as they stock up on beer, put a mattress against the window, and amazingly keep each other calm as the water rises to the 2nd floor of their family home. "We have to check it out ourselves," they say, "because we can't trust the media or the government anymore." (A Corner of Her Eye).
Rooftop Films' Home Movies show is all about the direct approach, the personal story, the raw humor, humiliation and humanity of real life, captured on video. Because flashy special effects are impressive, but in this program, we just shoot the damn camera with a gun (Shoot).
THE FILMS: Shoot (Joe Nanashe | New Brunswick, NJ | 2:25)
Joe Nanashe shooting video. Literally.
Mario Makes a Movie (Roger Deutsch | New York, NY | 11:42)
In this curious mix of found footage, fact and fiction, Roger Deutsch weaves a profound and moving tale of guilt and miscommunication, redemption and recovery. Deutsch presents the story of an honest but troubled teacher of developmentally disabled adults and his attempts to placate his fractious student Mario via filmmaking.
Paris, 1951 (Jasmin Gordon | San Francisco, CA | 9:54)
"Forty years after my grandfather's death, my mother discovered that the man who raised her was not her father. This short film is a meditation on the process of reinterpreting personal history and the challenge of recollecting the past in the absence of all images and objects." - Jasmin Gordon
A Diary Film (New Hylton | Collingswood, NJ | 4:53)
Ned is making a movie about his life. One man's boredom is our bemusement.
An Elmo (Fritz Hoepfner | 1:00)*
Scruffiches (Ben Hudnut | 1:00)*
Little skuzzy troublemakers in SloMo.
Dog Years (Sam Heam & Richard Penfold | United Kingdom | 3:50)
What kind of inner monologue does your dog have? This in-camera edit is a lovely, sadly comic portrait of a friendship between two beasts who can't seem to communicate.
Garpenfargle (Bill Kersey & Edward Kim | Oro Valley, AZ | 4:04)
More notes from inside the canine mind: what does your dog do when you're not home? Make trouble (but maybe you knew that already). What does your dog hear when you speak to him? I bet you don't know this one. If you did, it might explain why the world's cutest dog is the world's busiest rascal. Watch it online on Video Dog.
Useless Dog (Ken Wardrop | Dublin, Ireland | 5:30)
A farmer is experiencing problems with his sheepdog's work. A witty documentary about an inept but lovable farm dog.
Time Mistake (Casimir Nozkowski | Brooklyn, NY | 6:40)
Warren Jefferson has a (stolen) time machine. His friend Emily is roped into recording the (disastrous) first usage. This hilarious (pseudo) home movie is one for the history books. Watch it online on YouTube.
The Four Kid Tenors (Ryan Junell | 1:00)*
Glitter Cowboy (Christopher Fleeger | 1:00)*
Kids are so funny . . . in SloMo.
The Boy in the Air (Lyn Elliot | University Park, PA | 2:00)
An enigmatic advertisement inspires a letter. The corporation writes back.
Strandkind (Michael Butnick | 1:00)*
Child as Figurine (Kimberlee Koym | 1:00)*
Kids are so graceful . . . in SloMo.
Skin and Bone (Bronwyn Holmes | Brooklyn, NY | 8:00)
A moving self-portrait by a young woman struggling with her eating disorder. The film is graphic and heart-wrenching, and yet we (and her mother) can only look on as the young woman knowingly wastes herself away.
My Life at 40 (Laurie Hill | London, England, UK | 7:40)
When you were little, what did you imagine your life would be like when you were older? Laurie Hill remembers, and compares his youthful imaginings to his real live at 37.
A Corner of Her Eye (Konrad Aderer | New York, NY | 22:00)
When Rooftop veteran Konrad Aderer (Life or Liberty, 7/4/03) and his two brothers holed up in their dad's house to weather Katrina, they had no idea what was coming their way. This is an intimate and spooky portrait that starts as a fun adventure and ends as a disaster barely averted.
* Selections from the Slo Mo Video Festival
The mind-boggling Slo Mo Video Festival consists of 100 videos by 85 artists from around the world, all of whom were commissioned to make one minute videos in slow motion. Throughout the summer, Rooftop Films will be screening various selections showing off the impressive range of work, from home movie chaos to art experiment bliss.
THE MUSIC:
Mexican-born Brooklyn-based producer ULI released her first solo album, Simple, on May 30th, 2006. Mixing different styles and languages the 10-song CD, produced by The Glacierz (Eugene Toale and ULI), was recorded in Mexico City with the punk band Liquits, and finished in Brooklyn with some of the best young players in town. With eight originals and covers of The Smiths and John Holt, Simple aims to release different singles in various international markets. As a producer ULI has worked with Ashanti, Gigi and Bill Laswell, Baby Monroe and Lazy K.
