Murder Party
Feature-length slasher-horror-comedy directed by Jeremy Saulnier
New York Sneak Preview
A random invitation to a Halloween party leads a man into the hands of a rogue collective intent on murdering him for the sake of their art, sparking a bloodbath of mishap, mayhem and hilarity.

Tickets | Watch the Trailer | Official Website
FRI., August 3, 2007
8:30 - Live Music by Ben Brewer of the Exit
9:00 - Movies Begin
11:30-1AM -After Party: Open Bar at Bar Matchless
Courtesy of Dewar's Scotch Whisky and Martin Miller's Gin

On the lawn of Automotive High School
CLICK for DIRECTIONS
50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.

Book Drive at All Automotive Shows:

Donate your old books to the Automotive library! Details HERE

Tickets -$8 at the door or online HERE
Ticket include FREE open bar at Bar Matchless

Presented in partnership with - IFC.com, New York magazine & Automotive High School.

Murder Party (Jeremy Saulnier| Brooklyn | 1:19:00)
The filmmaker will be present for the screening and a Q and A after the film.

It’s Halloween night in Brooklyn. Chris, a lonesome and unremarkable fellow, finds a mysterious invitation on the street and follows it to what he thinks will be a fun costume party. It turns out to be a lethal trap set by a gang of deranged hipster artists. Their plan is to lure someone to their remote warehouse base and ritually murder them as part of an extreme artistic event. It’s all to impress their wealthy and sinister guru/patron, who soon arrives with promises of grant money and his dead-eyed henchman. As the booze-and-drug-fueled night wears on, rivalries within the group flare up with violent consequences. A body count accrues and Chris must take advantage of the ensuing chaos if he’s ever to escape the warehouse and survive the night.

Rooftop Films tends to show quite a few earnest documentaries about struggling communities in transition and not so many slasher-comedies about homicidal 20-somethings plotting to massacre innocent suckers for kicks. For this reason, some might be surprised to see that we are screening Jeremy Saulnier’s wantonly wicked horror comedy, Murder Party. But in its own crazy, sadistic way, Murder Party is a Rooftop Films film through and through—it’s very much about real-life communities, class struggle, gentrification and disillusionment with modern society’s disregard for the individual.

It’s just that at the end of this film, people get acid poured over their heads and are mangled with power tools in really clever ways.

Set in a factory in Williamsburg just blocks from the lawn at Automotive High School where it will be screened on August 3rd, Saulnier’s film is a spot-on satire of trendy, vapid pop-artists at their worst. But despite the venom the characters spit at one another as they plot to kill creatively and win lucrative grants, Saulnier’s satire is really something of a homage to Billburg gone stark-raving mad. The script is so clever, the set-ups so crafted, the action so well edited, and the actors play their roles with such obvious relish that it is possible to see Murder Party not as a social critique, but rather as a perversely enjoyable (and fittingly ironic) celebration of the North Brooklyn art scene. There’s something oddly lovable about even the most despicable of the wanna-be art stars in Murder Party, and after the film I bet it will be hard for the audience to resist the lure of the ‘Burg. I’m willing to bet that after you are done laughing at your neighbors, more than a few of you will wander down Lorimer to the open bar, have a few drinks and and enjoy your time amongst many of those supposedly despised hipsters until the G stops running…

Preceded by:
Raymond (Bif | France | 5:00)
A hilarious, gorgeous, bizarre special effects masterpiece directed by the three French geniuses known collectively as "Bif." This short also tells the story of a man trapped in a bizarre experiment--in this case one that involves a a liquid solution that allows scientists to control his every movement.

Little Farm (Calvin Reeder | 8:00)
Little Farm tells the shocking tale of a disjouinted family and their inheritance of a strange piece of real estate. Intense, eerie imagery and a haunting soundtrack paint a dark and uneasy portrait and lead up to a truly shocking, brutal climax.

Music: Nakatomi Plaza

Right now is a pretty surreal time to be in a punk band. It seems like these days words like “originality” and “inventiveness” have been stricken from most bands’ vocabularies, only to be replaced with “regional Soundscans” and “target demographics.” It’s ironic, really, that a subgenre that was initially born out of contempt for the mainstream culture and brazen capitalism has turned into a commodity of forced rebellion. Then there’s Nakatomi Plaza. Formed in New York City, in 1998, the Brooklyn-based Nakatomi Plaza—guitarist/vocalist Oscar Rodriguez, Bassist/vocalist Al Fair and drummer Lou Maiolica—have embodied punk rock’s DIY ethic via tireless touring and self-promotion for the past eight years and their third full-length, Unsettled, is the culmination of their career. Produced by J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines), the album is a unique amalgam of influences that juxtaposes post-punk’s angular riffs with virtuosic guitar solos, electronic flourishes and even the occasional screamo yelp to create a sound that’s instantly hooked countless listeners, including Robbins himself.

Book Drive for Automotive High School
As part of the their ongoing efforts to improve the educational environment for their students, this year Automotive High School is making efforts to substantially expand their library. Of course, the most important thing in the library is the books, so if you want to help out a public high school that is chronically short of funding, drop off your old books at any Rooftop show at Automotive High and they will be added to the library's collection. Pretty much any and every book is useful, but remember that these are high school students, so your graduate school text books might not be that useful to them! But novels, age-appropriate textbooks, non-fiction and historical books and just about everything else is very useful and would be much appreciated.