OPENING NIGHT!
This is What We Mean By Short Films…
Shorts Program
Simple films with complex ideas; award-winning shorts that leave a long impression.


Admission: TONIGHT'S SHOW IS SOLD OUT! Tickets for next week's New York Non-Fiction show are available online now.

Friday, June 8, 2007
8:30 - Live music by Luke Temple
9:00 - Short Films
11:00 - 1:00 - After Party at Fontana's with an open bar courtesy of Dewar's, martin Miller's Gin and New York Magazine
Admission: $8.00 at the door, just $5.00 online
TRT: 1:37

On the roof of the Open Road Rooftop Project
CLICK for DIRECTIONS
350 Grand Street @ Essex (Lower East Side, Manhattan)
F/J/M/Z to Essex / Delancey
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Call 718.417.7362 for additional information..


Presented in partnership with IFC.com, New York magazine, and Open Road
Watch Rooftop shorts at IFC.com

This Is What We Mean By Short Films
Day after day, you put your keys down in the exact same place, you watch the same kung fu movies, you cheer with the crowd on cue. Does it matter that you fell in love on a day when there's a war going on halfway around the world? Will anyone notice if you're abducted by aliens? It's a vast and complicated world without a lot of time for little kids with vertigo, misplaced dogs, stick figures named Bill.

But this is your world. These little things are your life. It does matter if you can climb that jungle gym. There is comfort in having your TV fixed by dinner time. The score of the game isn't significant; your participation is.

The brilliance of these short films is that they have simple plots but complex ideas, short running times but long-lasting emotional impact. At Rooftop Films, we provide a venue for emerging and established filmmakers who make deeply personal cinema, films that offer intimate looks into individual lives and distinct communities worldwide. Rather than focus on grandiose topics or artistic abstractions, we show movies that explore single moments in time and place. This is what our festival is all about. This is what we mean by short films…

THE FILMS:
A Lesson in Filmmaking (Nacho Vigalondo | Madrid, Spain | 2:30)
A terrifying toy. An unsuspecting cow. Our new favorite crazy Spanish filmmaker. It's not as hard as you might think to make a brilliant short film. www.nachovigalondo.com

Wir Sind Dir Treu (We Are The Faithful)
(Michael Koch Koln, Switzerland | 9:00)
The Swiss football team FC Basel’s crowd animator gives his all for the team: he decides what music to play at matches and choreographs the fans to peak performance. It’s all about the energy and emotion he transmits to the fans and how he directs them. Or is it rather the game itself that the fans follow?

For(r)est in the Des(s)ert
(Luiso Berdejo | San Sebastian, Spain | 12:00)
Forest does not live here anymore. A young boy searches for his alien-abducted freind, finding clues in boxes of Golden Grahams and frog intestines.

By Modern Measure (Matthew Lessner | Nehalem, OR | 5:30)
An amateur French sociologist presents his observations on a day in the life to two young Americans who meet by chance outside a Taco Bell on October 08, 2006.

Everything Will Be OK (Don Hertzfeldt | Goleta, CA | 17:00)
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for US Short Film at 2007 Sundance Film Festival
An absolutely stunning film that mixes animation, still photos and abstract imagery to tell the story of a little stick figure named Bill and a small series of dark and troubling events which lead him to an epiphany about the meaning of his life -- or the lack thereof.

Dog Days (Geoffroy de Crecy | Paris, France | 16:00)
A delightfully bizarre animation in which an adorable dog and an ugly girl are switched at birth, causing life-changing ramifications for them and their families.

The Little Gorilla (Harry Kellerman | New York, NY | 12:00)
A jungle gym as big as the Empire State Building. A boy who's afraid to climb it. A sweet and magical film about two brothers helping each other overcome their fears.

The Tube With a Hat (Radu Jude | Bucharest, Romania | 23:00)
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for International Short Film at 2007 Sundance Film Festival
A boy from a small village wakes up his father and persuades him to go to the city to fix their TV. This rural neo-realist film is filled with subtle and brilliant details which illuminate the father-son relationship and the divide between the poor family and the gruff people in Bucharest.

Music:

Luke Temple is not so much concerned with hidden worlds but with the landscape of the one around us. The concrete world is a series of relationships. Form is established by it's relationship to empty space. There will always be tension and release in an unending line as long as there is no border. Life surprises most of us , we can never see its composition, our birth is one side of the frame and our death will be the other. A song is the rise and fall of an empire. Like seeing the world from a plane.