TERRA UPDATE: MENI TSIRBAS AND DANE SMITH INTERVIEW

Check out this interview to see how Meni and Producer Dane Smith (formerly the Rooftop publicity go-to guy) plan on adapting the short film Terra (Rooftop 2004) into the first ever CGI feature film with an overtly political message. How are they going to pull this off? Well, Brian Cox, Dennis Quaid, Amanda Peet, Chris Evans, Luke Wilson, Danny Glover, Ron Perlman, and David Cross are planning on helping out. Amazingly, it appears Meni will be able to get this film completed and released without compropmising his original vision at all. Who would have guessed it was possible?

KILLER OF SHEEP AT IFC

Former Rooftop curators Imagenation reminded me this morning to support the opening of Charles' Burnett's classic 1977 American Neo-Realist film, Killer of Sheep, at the IFC Center this weekend. If you don't know much about the film, you can read on ReverseShot.com about how much better than Bubble it is. Or you can just stay positive and take my word for it.

NEW ALBUM FROM VIC THRILL

Vic Thrill and the Saturn Missile have a new album out, and of course it is packed with multi-layered, retro-futuristic, electro-infused power-pop. If you have seen them play at a Rooftop show before, I am sure you remember them--their shows are unforgettable and Vic and the MIssile are are great to be around even when they don't have instruments in their hands. Listen to some songs from The Circus of Enlightenment HERE and then buy the album on iTunes.

NYUFF THIS WEEKEND IN NYC

The one and only original New York Underground Film Festival starts up this weekend and there are going to be dozens--literally dozens--of beloved Rooftop alumni at the Anthology Film Archives with their new films and selected classics. Some of the films/filmmakers you should check out are:
*Jim Finn's latest socialist masterpiece
* Sundance roommate Josh Safdie's Jerry Ruis Shall we do This
* A new sexy Lynne Stewart doc by Paul Chan
* A program devoted entirely to the films of Paul Tarrago and Ben Coonley
* Animation by Mariana Ellenberg
* New work by Aaron Valdez
* A program of ridiculously low budget shorts curated by Mike Plante featuring such buddies as the Zellner Bros., Roger Beebe, Bill Daniel, Eileen Maxson, Carson Mell, Sebastian Wolf and even many people who haven't yet had their films up on the roof.
PLUS!
* The most fun thing you can do with a roomful of Pabst-upped underground NYC filmmakers and a really unreliable internet connection--It's TubeTime

TRAILER FOR BENH ZEITLIN'S
GLORY AT SEA

The trailer for Court 13's Rooftop Films' Filmmaker's Funded short Glory at Sea is online and it looks freakin' amazing. Shot entirely on location in Katrina-torn New Orleans, Glory at Sea tells the story of 11 survivors who build a boat and sail to sea to retrieve their loved ones from the bottom of the ocean. You need Quicktime to watch it at http://www.court13.com/glorytrailer.mov. The full film should be ready for screening this summer on the roof, so check back here for updates. More info at Court13.com

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS REVIEW:
JOHN CARNEY'S ONCE

There have been a lot of attempts over the last ten years (or 40 years, or whatever) to update the classic Hollywood musical film. Most of these movies are pretty painful to watch. Dancer in the Dark, Moulin Rouge, Everyone Says I Love You, O Brother Where Art Thou?, etc., all suffer from one or more of the following: bad scripts, bad songs, bad casting (John Leguizamo as a squealing midget?), silly politics, excessive nostalgia, or (most of all) an inability to move the action from dialogue to song without creating hopelessly contrived and awkward moments that seem to make both the actors and audience squirm nervously. And then there is John Carney's Once, an ultra low-budget busker musical shot in Dublin with non-actors, most of whom were themselves former street performers. Whereas most recent musicals (save Hedwig and a smattering of musical animation) have struck me as hopelessly misguided, Once is a genuinely appropriate 21st century musical--it's raw, real and lightly melancholy like the The Puffy Chair or some of the other better ultra-indies; but it is also still romantic, hopeful and musical, like a modern day Singing in the Rain. And somehow that works out perfectly.

It was pretty tough to get tickets to Once at Sundance in January, so I missed it while I was there--and felt terrible once I spoke to people who had seen it. The reviews were great (check out the 100% red Tomatometer) and everyone seemed to love it (it won Audience Awards at Dublin and Sundance). So I was very pleased when Stu VanAirsdale of the Reeler (my favorite NY film blog, if I haven't mentioned that before) called up to offer Rooftop a couple of free tickets. Mark and I quickly accepted the offer and dashed up to MoMA to snatch the tickets from his hands.

I'm glad to say that Carney's film is deserving of all the hype. Often described as a sort of neo-verite musical, Once tells the tale of a lonely Irish vacuum cleaner repair man (played pitch-perfect by Glen Hansard of the Irish band the Frames) who supplements his income by playing cheesy mainstream ballads in the street during his lunch breaks. At night after work he returns to playing in the streets, but once the crowds have cleared he performs his own songs--tremendously well performed, angst-ridden, autobiographical ballads that he feels are too depressing to play for the cheerful shoppers who stroll past in the afternoon.

After hearing one such song, Marketa (Marketa Irglova) introduces herself. She is young and pretty and from the Czech Republic, apparently lonely or heartbroken as well, loves his songs and has a broken vacuum cleaner to boot. It seems a perfect match, but Glen is skeptical and withdrawn and he doesn't at first give her much of a chance. Nonetheless, she returns the following day, pulling her little Hoover behind her by the nozzle as if it were puppy on a leash. Carney unabashedly sets out to make Marketa irresistibly, cutely charming, and he largely succeeds by giving her a number of adorable little lines reminiscent of those that Godard once wrote for Anna Karina. Glen invites Marketa to have lunch with him by asking Marketa if she is hungry and she says cheerfully and nonchalantly, "Yes! I am always hungry," and hops into the cafe.

It turns out Marketa is also a musician and the two of them improvise a surprisingly touching duet in a music store and share a bus ride to Glen's house/Hoover repair shop. Along the way Glen explains the source of his emotional turmoil via a charming series of little ditties about his ex-girlfriend, and by this point it has become apparent that the songs performed live in the film will communicate far more about the emotional lives of the characters than any of the dialogue. When Glen makes a clumsy pass at Marketa later that day in his bedroom she merely stands up and says, "What? Fuck this. Thanks for the Hoover," and walks out the room. It's a cute moment and a priceless line, but it's also understated and oblique, and it sets the tone for the entire film; the songs are baldly confessional and very emotional, but the characters are mostly incapable of baring their feelings once the music stops.

The tension between the open nerves displayed in the music and Glen and Marketa's inability to express themselves in their daily life is exhilarating to watch. Though the basic storyline of the film is slight--let's put on a show!--the film never drags for a moment, as we can't pull our eyes off the two leads as they alternately dance towards and away from one another. The songs are mostly performed and recorded live in front of the camera and are consistently strong and strangely well recorded (Mark and I were both rather confused as to how these two things were achieved, but alas...no Q and A). What's perhaps just as important is that though the songs serve the traditional function of filling in the emotional content of the story, the characters are always motivated to sing them aloud by some plausible action within the plot. Given contemporary audiences reluctance to give in to the conventions of the musical this is not an easy thing to pull off. But Carney (and Hansard) create the illusion of effortlessness that keeps the film feeling breezy and allows the emotion of the songs to sneak up on us. More than once I felt blindsided by a beautiful chorus, as if I wasn't prepared for the depth of feeling I suddenly felt for the characters, and I could feel the audience around me reacting the same way. It is quite an invigorating film to watch in a theater.

Unfortunately, Carney was too sick to attend the Q and A, so a lot of my questions about the production have yet to be answered. But Stu caught up with the filmmaker on Thursday and asked him some good questions. The film is being released by Fox in May and you absolutely must see it should you get the chance--my first official must-see film of 2007. If you want to read more about Once you can check out a few of these interviews:

from The Reeler
from Comingsoon.net (Sundance)
from Indiewire (Sundance)

JUDGE AND HERTZFELDT'S

THE ANIMATION SHOW

I should have mentioned this in January when they were in New York, but since I didn't (and the IndieWire article reminded me), I guess I will plug it now. Every year Mike Judge (Of Beavis and Butthead, Office Space and Idiocracy fame) and Don Hetzfeldt (whose film Everything Will Be OK was awarded best short by Mark and the other Sundance jurors this year) tour around the country with a collection of really amazing and eclectic short animation from all over the world. The programs are really as good as it gets and this year's batch includes some of my personal favorite animation from the last few years, including Shane Acker's 9 (which we showed in 2005 and which was nominated for an academy award), Bill Plympton's Guide Dog (incredibly funny--we showed it at Dark Toons in 2006), as well as some other great films we haven't shown but which I love to death--Pes' Game Over, Run Wrake's Rabbit and Gaelle Denis' City Paradise. They will be screening all over the country over the next few months, so read about the films here and check out their schedule here and if they come your way make sure you go see it.

ROOFTOP SHORTS
CASIMIR NOZKOWSKI'S GHETTO BIG MAC

SXSW REVIEW – Billy the Kid
When Jennifer Venditti was casting Carter Smith's Sundance award-winning Bugcrush, a gay-themed horror short about small town teens, she scouted a high school in rural Maine for weeks, sitting in the cafeteria and observing students, startled by the enduring strength of the social cliques. One time she sat with a group of bullies, and they told her about how they once invited a kid over to their lunch table simply in order to make fun of him and torture him. She asked which kid it was, and they pointed to a short, skinny kid with a small ponytail, sitting all by himself at the fringes of the lunchroom. That kid was Billy Price. When Jennifer started to spend time with Billy, all the other kids pestered her: Why are you talking to him?

“When I cast Billy in Bugcrush,” Jennifer said at one of her SXSW screenings, “it was partly because of what an amazing kid he was, and partly as a Fuck You to all those other kids.”

Billy the Kid, a feature-length documentary about this astonishing 15-year-old, is the quietest, sweetest, most heartbreaking Fuck You I’ve ever seen.

The film begins by spending time with Billy alone. He self-consciously tries to explain himself, the contradictions he knows he has: his love of heavy metal and his affection for his pet cat, his violent streaks and his sensitivity. While playing a shooting game at an arcade, Billy remarks, “I don’t shoot the girls, because I think it’s wrong to hurt women, real or fake.”

The opening section is filled with wonderful revelations, and throughout the film watching Billy’s relationship with his mother provides a touching example of the way a parent should deal with a brilliant but troubled child – she’s patient, she listens, she learns, she supports letting him make his own mistakes. But for me the film really takes off when Billy spies a girl his age who works at the local diner. Heather has an eye condition that makes her eyes flicker from side to side, and she is nearly blind. Her younger brothers tell Billy that she gets teased a lot, and where many kids who are bullied might see someone weaker than them that they could turn their aggression on, Billy’s heart goes out to her immediately.

Their courtship and romance play out like the finest fiction, extended scenes that are perfectly paced and shot with a delicacy and tenderness that is a joy to watch. Describing it would be largely pointless, as so much is loaded into every blurted aside, every expectant look, every pause. Suffice it to say that Billy the Kid is very deserving of the Documentary Feature award at SXSW, and much more. This portrait of a young outcast and his struggle to shed “a lifetime of loneliness” had my palms sweating, my heart racing and my eyes tearing up, as though I was the one with the live-or-die teenage crush all over again.

SXSW REVIEW – Quiet City
As a native New Yorker, I loved what director Aaron Katz and his tight crew accomplished presenting Brooklyn in their new film Quiet City – they found solace. The film follows a simple story – a young woman visits New York but can’t find her friend, and ends up spending the weekend with a slacker guy she meets in the subway – but Katz says he penned a 120-page script which provided the platform for improvised character development that is endearing and insightful.

One might say that it appears that this crew brought their pastoral North Carolina atmosphere to NYC (David Gordon Green served as an assistant grip of some sort), but I prefer to think that they lovingly captured a side of New York that not many people, and certainly not many non-natives, are ever able to appreciate: the wistful solitude you can find, particularly when you’re falling in love, when you’re able to shut the world out and serenely drift through the streets of the world’s most bustling town.

The two actors, Erin Fisher and Cris Lankenau, had never really met before the 6-day shoot began, so the learning and exploring process we see on screen is very real. Apparently the camera rolled and rolled on the pair, sometimes going for takes as long as 35 minutes (hot swapping out digital memory cards to keep recording). The results are delicate camera work, austere sound, and rich, engaging performances.

At the Q & A following the premiere, an audience member asked the two actors what they thought happened next for their characters, after the film’s final moments. [Warning: A charming little semi-spoiler follows.] Erin said that she assumed that they did fool around when they got back to the guy’s place, but that the shot of the airplane that ends the film indicated that her character went home, and there was no long-term, long-distance relationship. Taking over the mic, Cris responded, “So I was used and abused, huh?” He explained that he thought the airplane shot was just mood-setting scenery, and that she stayed and their relationship flourished. “Is that what you wanted,” Erin asked him. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted.” If you saw this film, you’ll understand how that little meta-extension of the story is fittingly sweet and poignant.

SXSW REVIEW - An Audience of One

I’m not going to tell you too much about Michael Jacobs’ doc An Audience of One, because I’d rather focus on the stunning Q & A that followed the screening at SXSW today. But quickly: this charming, wild, astonishing film follows Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal minister from San Francisco, who has raised $600,000 from his congregation to make a sci-fi future distopian feature-length film version of the Biblical story of Joseph. Suffice it to say, that in making this film all hell breaks loose. (God forgive me for that pun.)

After the film played, one audience member asked the minister, with all those people in the audience laughing at you, and with so many people in the film, including your mother and your daughter, questioning your judgment, what was it like watching the film? Gazowsky replied, “It felt like watching myself go to the bathroom.” [Paraphrasing]: “I was sitting back there, turning red, getting embarrassed. It was hard. But I believe in what I’m doing, and if I succeed, then I know it will be worth it.”

Another audience member said that making films is a skill that takes years of training. You wouldn’t watch a surgeon, and then go try brain surgery. Why did you do this, or at least, why not start with something more simple? Again, the preacher was unflappable, and said that he loves film, but that he saw that the surgeon, Hollywood, was killing the patient. And that he felt like he needed to learn surgery and save cinema. They used to make a TV show, a low budget preacher show “that people like you would never watch, because it was mediocre. And I was tired of mediocrity.” So he wanted to do something big. And he knew that he couldn’t climb the ladder in Hollywood. Independent cinema is much like Christian cinema – outsiders who can’t get in and need to make films any way they can.

Those are noble and insightful comments, and the respectful way that Jacobs (the doc filmmaker) treats his subject makes for a fascinating and enjoyable film. Still, I couldn’t help think that Gazowsky was a great con man, a disillusioned liar, and a crook. I loved the film, and I’d be interested to hear what others think of him.

Check out this trailer.

SXSW REVIEW - Hanna Takes the Stairs
Hanna Takes the Stairs is something of a miracle. Director Joe Swanberg took a bunch of non-actors, camped them out on a living room floor in Chicago for a month, and improvised a delightful, insightful and nuanced film.

The title, Joe told a packed and enthusiastic house, comes from a sketch of the plotline Joe made, which looked like a woman climbing stairs: she tries to move up (or down?), hits a plateau, and then tries to shake things up again. Most of the actors are also directors and/or writers themselves (Greta Gerwig, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osborne, Mark Duplass, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal), and I think that expertise allowed Joe and the cast to always find the dramatic shifts and tension in every scene.

Hannah herself is a fascinating character: at times manipulative, at times a victim; there are times she’s working hard to figure herself out and times she throws up her hands; but through all of it, one gets the sense that Hannah (as a character) is a very genuine person, even if she doesn’t know what she’s doing or she’s stabbing you in the back. I was strangely reminded of Jack Nicholson’s character in Five Easy Pieces. And yet this film is also fetching hilarious. There are fantastic set ups and visual jokes, pop culture gags and pure oddness, but what makes the film funny in a meaningful way is that most of the the humor is predicated on insights into the characters psyches, piercing their vivid emotional states.

My only regret is that for something that was left on the cutting room floor. Todd Rohal told me he ended every scene he was in with the same line: “Ok, I’m going to go take a poop and call my mom.” I can’t wait for the deleted scenes on the DVD. Watch for camera-shake in Todd’s scenes when Joe told me he was laughing so hard he couldn’t keep the framing.

SXSW REVIEW – Big Rig
At the premiere of Big Rig, director Doug Pray said that he set out thinking he would make a doc about the myth of the wild trucker life-style: high speed and danger, dodging cops and taking drugs, lot lizards and madmen. But once he got to know American truckers – over the course of five years of riding and shooting – he made a U-turn and ended up with a film that celebrates the hard-working, honorable and insightful men and women who are the lifeblood of America’s commerce. “If you bought it, a truck brought it” is the trucker creed, with so many goods transported by truck that a national stoppage would shut down the American economy in three days.

This dynamic film features gorgeous shots from across the country and interviews with about 20 drivers of all types, talking on a wide range of issues – from customizing your rig to the economic struggles of the independent trucker, from the destruction of truck stop culture to the destruction of American freedom. One driver showed how he was getting $800 for a long haul, and over $300 of that would go into diesel fuel – which is cheaper to produce than regular gasoline, but costs on average $0.50 more per gallon. The situation, drivers say, is not tenable.

Many of the truckers in the film were at the premiere, and I asked if it was possible for drivers to switch to other fuels, or if they thought America might change the nature of shipping entirely. But they said their profit margins are so tight, and fuels like bio-diesel and ethanol are still not readily available, so they can’t afford to try to switch. As one driver put it, the oil companies, the shipping companies, and the Department of Transportation “have us by the cojones.”

SXSW REVIEW -- Hard Road Home
Macky Alston and Andrea Meller’s powerful documentary Hard Road Home exposes one of the most difficult and tragic issues facing the United States vast and growing prison population: what to do when you get out. You have become used to a static and structured life, where meals, clothes and shelter are provided for you. You are legally barred from many professions, and far more employers simply won’t hire you. And many of your friends and family members are just waiting for you to get busted again.

This film is about a non-profit non-governmental organization, run by former convicts, which helps people when they get out of jail. Based in East Harlem, the Exodus Transitional Community is simply amazing, going far beyond traditional social services. For example, they not only help you find a job listing, they’ll train you how to talk in an interview, give you a suit to wear, and give you a wake-up call to make sure you get there. Most of all, they provide an astonishingly caring community. In the film, when one of the instructors in the program has a drug relapse, the underpaid staff immediately takes up a collection for his family, and takes to the streets to find him. When he finally comes in after several days, he fully expected to be chastised and fired. Instead, his co-workers greet him with hugs, hot food, and words of encouragement.

The film itself is hard-hitting and delicately told, heartbreaking, uplifting and insightful, with in depth coverage and a fantastically effective structure which highlights the difficult struggle ex-convicts face and the astonishing power of the Exodus house. Julio Medina, the inspiring head of the program, was at the screening, and he said that Exodus is in grave danger as one of their major grants is drying up. That a program as effective and necessary as Exodus is in dire need of funding is, quite frankly, criminal, and I hope this film can be a catalyst to help this program and many others like it.

SEND INFO OUR WAY!
Got a new undistributed short or feature film to recommend? Know of a rooftop that might be good for a show? Send an email to dan*at*rooftopfilms*dot*com.

MAYSLES AT THE ANTHOLOGY

Every now and then there are moments when the folks at the Anthology Film Archives remind you how uniquely valuable they are. Friday night was just such an evening as Al Maysles and the good guys at the Maysles Institute came downtown to present a batch of rarely (or never) before seen clips from the Maysles overflowing archives. Seeing these short clips broken up is not as engrossing as watching a fully realized Maysles film, and I'll admit that my mind wandered here and there during the two hour screening that featured excerpts from 12 different doc projects, plus a small selction of commercials and a clip from a strangely charming appearance they made on the original Late Night with David Letterman show. But the gems within this program...they are simply amazing. My personal favorite and definitely the crowd-pleasingest of the bunch was the simply extraordinary short promotional film "Salvador Dali's Fantastic Dream." Apparently Disney commissioned a painting by Dali in some madcap attempt to promote their Raquel Welch sci-fi spectacular Fantastic Voyage and also paid the Maysles to document his artistic process. If only corporations wasted money so creatively today. Dali's portrait of Welch is silly pop-art, but watching the painter dash wildly about about Manhattan with his waxed moustahce and a gaggle of sycophantic reporters, searching for "inspiration" is unlike anything I have ever seen. That the short is narrated by in sardonic newsreel style brings it all together perfectly. Serendipitous moments of humanist camp trash that even a Bouvier Beale could never match.

SXSW REVIEW - Third Ward, TX

I walked over to the screening of Third Ward, TX, taking in some warm Texas atmosphere before checking out this lovely documentary. The Third Ward is a neighborhood in Houston that was historically populated by African-Americans. In the 1960s, the city ran a highway through the area, removing 30,000 people, isolating and dividing the area, and wrecking the tight, vibrant community. In the late 1990s, a group of black artists began The Project Row Houses, a program in which they converted abandoned houses into artist residencies and low-income housing, primarily for black artists and particularly for single mothers. The artists in the project were careful to communicate and listen to the local residents, and the results have been spectacular, rebuilding the community, staving off gentrification and providing historical and cultural dialogue. I missed or the film leaves vague the facts of how this program operates, but the focus of the film is on the clearly powerful, rejuvenating effects Project Row Houses has on the neighborhood. It's a great story, told with charm and dexterity, and really has universal appeal -- these are issues facing every city in America, and our country needs more innovative ideas like Project Row Houses. A first step is for people to see Third Ward, TX.

SXSW RECOMMENDATIONS
There are a few films I’ve already seen, and I highly recommend:

King Corn (Aaron Woolf, Ian Cheney, Curt Ellis)
Murder Party (Jeremy Saulnier)
The Prisoner (Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein)
Fish Kill Flea (Brian Cassidy, Aaron Hillis, Jennifer Loeber)
When Adnan Comes Home (Andrew Berends)
Kamp Katrina (David Redmon & Ashely Sabin)

I plan on writing up a few sentences about each soon, but if you're around, trust me, they're all great and worth seeing.

SXSW
7am and I’m on my way to Austin, where it’s 82 degrees and there are about 82 films I want to see. I’ve only got so much time, though, so I’ve had to narrow it down a bit. The short list includes:

Third Ward, TX (Andrew Garrison); Hard Road Home (Macky Alston / Andrea Meller); Lost in Woonsocket (John Chester); Election Day (Katy Chevigny); Big Rig (Doug Pray); Crazy Sexy Cancer (Kris Carr); Hell on Wheels (Bob Ray); Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg); What Would Jesus Buy? (Rob Vanalkemade); Audience of One (Michael Jacobs); Quiet City (Aaron Katz); Great World of Sound (Craig Zobel); Billy the Kid (Jennifer Venditti).

If anyone has other recommendations, drop me a line.

What I'm going to try to do with this blog is give quick reviews of the movies, but also incorporate facts and anecdotes about the films which I learned from Q & A's and my personal discussions with the directors, cast and crew. It will be totally like you're here at the festival yourself!

ROOFTOP SHORTS:
FRITZ DONNELLY'S HOW DRIVE THE CAR