Rooftop Partners with IFP

[Photo of Rooftop alum & grantee Susan Youssef’s IFP Lab project Habibi Rasak Kharban.]

For the fourth year in a row, Rooftop Films is pleased to collaborate with IFP on screenings and forum activities during Independent Film Week (September 19-23, 2010). Rooftop will host three events in three different outdoor locations, showing films that passed through the No Borders forum and through the IFP Filmmaker Labs. And this year, for the first time, Rooftop has chosen three screenplays by our alumni to be in the Emerging Narratives section of the IFW project forum.

Like Rooftop Films, IFP is a non-profit organization committed to supporting independent filmmakers in a variety of ways. The annual IFW consists of a number of initiatives aimed at building industry interest for new work, as well as general audience support for independent film projects.

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SCREENINGS

Monday, September 20
On the roof of Open Road (Lower East Side, Manhattan)
HOWL (Sneak Preview)
directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
James Franco stars as the young Allen Ginsberg–poet, counter-culture adventurer, and chronicler of the Beat Generation. In his famously confessional, leave-nothing-out style, Ginsberg recounts the road trips, love affairs, and search for personal liberation that led to the most timeless and electrifying work of his career: the poem HOWL.
Click for details.

Tuesday, September 21
On the pier at Solar One (Kips Bay, Manhattan)
IFP LABS SHOWCASE
Short scenes and trailers from each of the documentary and narrative feature works in progress participating in IFP’s 2010 Independent Filmmaker Labs. Catch a sneak preview of next year’s indie festival and theatrical hits.
Click for details.

Wednesday, September 22
On the High Line (Chelsea, Manhattan)
TWELVE WAYS TO SUNDAY
Directed by Anna Farrell
World Premiere! Amid a rural landscape and disappearing communities, the residents of Allegany County, NY are living the working-class American story. This luscious and intimate cinematic portrait captures the testimonies of life in these small towns.
Click for details.

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PROJECT FORUM
Project Forum is the centerpiece of Independent Film Week, designed specifically as a place for industry to meet with new talent, as well as discover fresh projects from emerging and veteran filmmakers. The program is also qualitatively and quantitatively the best opportunity in the nation for independent film and media artists to find funders, supporters and/or producers.

Across a broad range of genres, budget ranges and sensibilities, IFP upholds its core mission to champion original and provocative storytelling at its Project Forum. This unique event focuses on assisting filmmakers when they need it most: through the development, financing and completion of their feature films. All projects showcased in the Project Forum are features and documentaries ranging from films in development, the early stages of production, to those nearing completion (i.e. in postproduction or at the rough cut stage).

Now more than ever, independent filmmakers across the country and around the globe are turning to IFP’s one- of-a-kind Project Forum to find the funding, support and industry acknowledgement they need to launch or complete their latest projects. After a 90% increase in submissions this year, 150 projects have been selected; projects are evenly split between documentary and narrative features in development (script through post- production) and have little previous industry exposure.

Rooftop Films selected three screenplays to be in the Emerging Narratives section of the forum. Emerging Narrative has become the premiere U.S. talent pool for producers, agents and managers, and development execs to discover projects in development from new voices on the independent scene. Presenting 25 scripts in early development by up-and-coming writers and writer/directors, all projects and participants have minimal previous exposure to the marketplace.

The Rooftop projects are:
The Garden Written and directed by Steve Collins. A sarcastic employee in a yoga center has an epiphany and decides to take the company back to the earth. (Comedy)

Killer Written by Casimir Nozkowski. High school politics are magnified exponentially as seniors, waiting to hear from colleges, blow off academics and dedicate themselves to playing a game called Killer. (Family/Teen)

Short Term 12 Written and directed by Destin Cretton, and produced by Asher Goldstein. Grace, a young supervisor at a group home, struggles to care for her teens while desperately avoiding the residue of her own dark past. (Drama)

Also selected was Rooftop Alum Topaz Adizes:
Look For The Light Written by Topaz Adizes and Tim Hetherington, directed by Topaz Adizes, and produced by Tim Hetherington and Adam Somner. A modern-day Faustian legend, “Look for the Light” is a psychological thriller about a war photographer, his spiritual degradation and his search for redemption. (Drama)

To read the full list of amazing IFP Project Forum selections—films you’ll be hearing about in the near future—click here.

Come out and enjoy these events, and take part of all that IFP has to offer for independent filmmakers and fans.