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

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.

RURAL MICROCINEMAS AND WHISKEY SMUGGLIN'

There is a nice little article in FIlmmaker about indie director Jay Craven's DIY 100-Town-Tour. Disappointed that all of the theaters in Vermont were booked with more commercial fare (even in the boonies of backwoods Vermont), he decided to rent as many churches and union halls as he could (for as little money as possible) and screen his whiskey smuggling epic Disappearances all over the state. In just one summer he was able to bring in more than $175,000 in box office receipts in the Green Mountain State alone--all without screening in any of the 24 towns that actually possess a proper movie theater--and I'm sure he reached a lot of audiences that wouldn't normally flock to low-budget SXSW period films. Of course, not every self-distributed indie stars Kris Kristofferson, a man that I imagine might still be considered quite a celebrity in all those small towns across Vermont that do not yet possess reel-to-reel projection technology (and in case you were wondering, yes, Kristofferson is still taking roles that require him to react badly when someone tries to tell him that he "can't just go highjack the train"). Regardless, Craven's successful tour is a lesson in ingenuity and perseverance that all of us so-called micro-cinema experts should probably take to heart. Tip of the hat to former Rooftop volunteer Brian Liloia and DV Guru.