As you may or may not know, part of Rooftop’s mission is to give grants to filmmakers whose work we’ve shown, in order to help them make their next film. Well, we’re pretty excited (to say the least) about the result of one of these grants: Las Palmas by Johannes Nyholm.
The full film hasn’t been released yet, but the trailer has received over 1.7 million over 2.7 million over FIVE MILLION views on YouTube, and has been featured on sites from BoingBoing to NPR. Watch it and you’ll see why.
The concept behind the short film is simple but genius. Inspired by new fatherhood, Johannes decided to make a short film featuring his one year old daughter as a drunk and disorderly middle aged woman in a bar in Las Palmas. When we heard the idea from Johannes last year, we knew it was going to be good. But from the looks of the trailer, the film has exceeded even our very high expectations.
The film premiered at the Gothenberg Film Festival last week, winning the best short film award and the audience award. You can read more about the film and its accolades at Johannes’ website. We’ll be show the full fourteen minute Las Palmas as part of our 2011 Summer Series. We’ll be announcing our full schedule in April here.
The success of Johannes’ Film on YouTube is the latest in a long string of successes by Rooftop Filmmakers Fund grantees. This year, for example, Sean Durkin won best director at Sundance for his Rooftop Grantee film Martha Marcy May Marlene. Grantees Moon Molson (Crazy Beats Strong Every Time), Emily Carmichael (The Hunter and The Swan Discuss Their Meeting), and Kelly Sears (Jupiter Elicius) also had films premiering at this year’s Festival. Emily’s Rooftop grantee film Ledo and Ix Battle Epically can be watched online now, and Kelly Sears’ grantee film, Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise, will screen at this year’s Rooftop Summer Series.
Ian Cheney’s The City Dark, Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever, Spencer Parsons’ Chainsaw Found Jesus, all grantees, are all premiering at the SXSW Festival festival this year.
Several other Rooftop grantees are nearing completion, and you can expect to see them premiering on the festival circuit next year. Matt Orzel and Heidi Brandenburg’s When Two Worlds Collide recently received a grant from Cinereach and the Sundance institute to finish production . Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild and Andrew Semans’ Nancy Please are currently in post production.
More information on the Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund grant program here.