ARTFUL POLITICAL DOC: LETTERS FROM BEIRUT
Letters from Beirut is a political documentary that owes more to Chris Marker than Michael Moore, and it's worth seeking out.

Thu. Mar 1, 2007, 9:00 pm at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater,
as part of Alwan's New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival

Last week at Bluestockings Books, I attended a "Through The Lens" work-in-progress screening (co-curated by Rooftop veteran filmmaker Mark Read) of Letters from Beirut, an experimental doc directed by Richard Rowley of Big Noise Films. Big Noise is radical media collective who have produced some of the most coherent and watchable movies from the frontlines of major rallies since the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle, and though I haven't seen all of their work, this film seems like a bold and welcome new departure for contemporary activist filmmaking. The film centers around letters written by Hanady Salman, a Lebanese woman who doesn't see a division between her role as a journalist and her role as a mother, a neighbor, a friend. As she lived through the 2006 war in Beirut, Salman wrote open letters to the world, filled with heartbreaking and uplifting stories, measured and overwhelming feelings, and rich philosophical ideas. The film balances her readings with footage from Lebanon, ranging from interviews with distraught neighbors who find the ability (or the need) to laugh to near abstract visual poetry outlining the dichotomy of natural progressions and man-made destruction.

Letters will NOT give you a history of the ongoing conflict nor details of this brutal war, so the best way to appreciate this film is to read up on the facts and then take in Letters from Beirut as an emotional and intellectual counterpoint. This 10-minute video which Big Noise produced is one of many places to look first for background.

ROOFTOP SHORTS: DAILY MONSTERS

Every day deserves its own demon, and Stefan G. Bucher has spawned a world full of them, which other net-trawlers have been happily embellishing and giving greater life to.



Every day for 100 days, Bucher made a little ink splot on a piece of paper, then sketched a funny monster out of it, filming the development as it went. I've been checking on the monsters for months now, so it's a bit pathetic on my part that I'm only cluing you, dear reader, in on it now, but it's still a delight to watch each monster evolve and see the whole process diversify. Although Bucher's not drawing them daily any more, people can now download ink splots and make new creatures, post pics of their demons, and write stories for the little troublemakers. Witness the beginning of the Daily Monsters, but also peep the latter-day tangential trolls and tales.

ONE RAT AND OTHER SHORTS COMING TO IFC

Oscar nominated shorts will be screening at the IFC Center starting this Friday, Feb. 16. Frankly, most of the live-action stuff that was nominated was a little schmaltzy--lots of children breaking the rules to do what's right, saving their villages from the cynicism of the elders, etc. But the animation is generally pretty great and the shorts that Magnolia is releasing alongside the Oscar stuff are all fantastic, particularly Adam Parrish King's The Wraith of Cobble Hill, Bill Plympton's Guide Dog--both of which screened at Rooftop last summer--and One Rat Short, which is pictured above and which you can also watch online HERE.

RADIATION AND HALF-COCKED
SPECIAL SCREENINGS AND DVD RELEASE

“Hawley and Galinsky know how to make pictures that shudder with feeling.” - Manohla Dargis

The classic underground Indie-Rock road movies Half-Cocked and Radiation are coming out on DVD this week and you should all come out to the special double-feature at the Anthology Film Archives tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

Long-time Rooftop Films fans probably know a lot about Micheal Galinsky and Suki Hawley. We have been big fans of theirs since they started making films in the long-ago 1990's and we have screened two of their unforgettable documentaries—Horns and Halos (2002) and Code 33 (2005). In true DIY fashion, they are releasing the underground classics Half-Cocked and Radiation as a double DVD via their RUMUR imprint, and if you are a fan of indie-rock bands that don't own their own equipment, feel any wistful nostalgia for the 90's or just enjoy inspred filmmaking, we highly encourage you go see their films this week and buy their DVD.Made in 1994 in Louisville, Nashville and Chattanooga, Half-Cocked follows a group of kids who steal a van full of music equipment and pretend to be a band in order to stay on the road. The film features Ian Svenonius and members of Rodan and The Grifters, with music by Unwound, Slant 6, Freakwater, Versus, Polvo, Smog, Helium and others. Read more about the films, the screenings and the DVDs HERE.

ROOFTOP SHORTS:
SKIZZ CYZCK'S MANAGER'S CORNER

In honor of the start of Spring training, here is Skizz Cyzyk's animation set to an infamous radio show featuring the foul-mouthed Orioles manager, Earl Weaver. There will not be many interviews like this one broadcast in 2007, but I bet that the obscenities directed at A-Rod this year will be a lot more profane than anything Earl ever said about Terry Crowley--though most of them won't be spoken aloud on air. Maybe.

YUP, LUCAS IS CRAZY

Sid Ganis, Jedi Master

Or at least Lucas has really, really bad taste--especially when his own films are concerned. This isn't very indie-film of me to post, but the Hot Blog just posted this:

George Lucas, giving the award to Sid Ganis, who was the in-house publicist on Star Wars: Episode Five - The Empire Strikes Back, said, "Sid is the reason why The Empire Strikes Back is always written about as the best of the films, when it actually was the worst one."

Does lucas really believe that the reason that most of the series' biggest fans--most of who were between the age of 2 and 10 when they first saw the films--have spent the last 25 years calling Empire the best of the 6 films, is because they have been unwittingly mouthing the opinions fed to them by a clever publicist in 1981? That's just a really weird thing to say.

THE PRISONER AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand's Everything's Cool and Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's The Prisoner: Or, How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair will be playing as part of Thom Powers' Stranger Than Fiction series later this month at IFC. I haven't seen Everything's Cool yet, but Mark an I both got a sneak peak at The Prisoner a few weeks back and we highly recommend it. The film tells the story of Yunis Khatayer Abbas, an Iraqi journalist who has the peculiar misfortune of having been unjustly imprisoned by both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. occupying army--at Abu Ghraib, no less. An earlier (and slightly less developed) version premiered to good reviews at Toronto, but one of the soldiers mentioned in interviews with Abbas showed up at a screening in Toronto and footage with him was quickly--but effectively--added into the story. Definitely a more serious and powerful film than Tucker's last film, the flawed but unfairly maligned (in my opinion) Gunner Palace, The Prisoner is yet another really powerful documentary about the war. I realize that things look grim in Iraq and there has been plenty written and whined regarding mass media's failure to convey an accurate picture of life in the war zone, but I genuinely believe that we will one day look back on all the amazing documentaries shot in Iraq or otherwise made about the war and realize that at least American documentary filmmakers didn't drop the ball. Anyway, buy tickets and congratulate the filmmakers in person on a job well done.

ROOFTOP SHORTS:
KATHY HUANG'S NIGHT VISIONS

A short, melancholy portrait of Blake Roberts, an Iraq vet just back from the war. Honest and direct, he shared with Kathy tales of daily life in the barracks as well as intimate, tragic moments. Though Blake does not question the motives of the U.S. government in Iraq or the missions he completed, he nevertheless has been shaken by his experiences in the Middle East. Screened at Rooftop on July 4th, 2007. You can watch it HERE

SUNDANCE SHORTS:
CARSON MELL'S
BOBBY BIRD: DEVIL IN DENIM

If I can find a picture without the balls blacked out, I'll post that one. Until that point, you will have to go HERE to watch the uncensored video. For those wondering, Bobby Bird is NOT a real rocker. But Carson says that he is hoping to create a live-action Devil in Denim feature film, and this Bobby Bird short is one of many things that he is doing to try to push that effort forward. Though Rooftop generally frowns upon calling card shorts, we'll make an exception for Bobby Bird, since it stands so well on its own. I, for one, am seriously considering getting my first tattoo as a result of this short--I bet you can guess which one I am leaning towards. Find out more about Carson and his characters here.

SUNDANCE SHORTS:
JOERG WAGNER'S MOTODROM

Ahhh...Motodrom. I loved this movie before I even saw it. From the moment I first read the description of Joerg Wagner's experimental documentary about hellriders who travel from carnival ground to carnival ground with their giant wooden tower and their antique motorcycles and go carts I was anxious to track down the film. Luckily it got into Sundance (it had previously played at many European festivals) and I saw it in Park City. We ran into Joerg and his co-producer and they were really good guys. You can watch it HERE, but hopefully we will get to screen it this summer and you will be able to watch it on the big screen at Rooftop as well.

ROOFTOP SHORTS:
MATTHEW POND'S THE NAKED COWBOY

Veteran Rooftop volunteer (from our Bushwick days) and all-around good guy Matthew Pond made this tremendously entertaining portrait of Times Square's famously talentless Naked Cowboy. You can watch it HERE

SUNDANCE SHORTS:
ANDY BLUBAUGH'S SCAREDYCAT

We screened Andy's charming short Hello, Thanks last summer and we are really excited to see that he has continued working in a similar vein but seems to really be making strides as a video artist, or video diarist, or personal documentarian or whatever he decides to call himself. Scaredycat is really great and since it screened at Sundance Sundance you can watch it online HERE.

FEMME HELMER STATS
Hollywood Reporter printed these stats yesterday, originally compiled by critic Carrie Rickey (all stats are 2006 only):

60% (3 of 5) of 2006 Oscar nominated documentary features are directed by women,
40% (2of 5) of 2006 Oscar nominated foreign-films are directed by women,
25% of Sundance 2007 features and shorts are directed by women
10% of 2006 best-picture Oscar nominees are directed by women
6.25 % of top-250 domestic box office grossers in 2006 are directed by women
1.8 % of top-1000 domestic box office grossers in 2006 are directed by women.

As the article points out, you can probably spin this raw info any way that you want, but it's interesting to see that even though Sundance is roughly 15 times better at presenting women's films than the market as a whole, it can still only manage to fill 25% of it's slate with films by female directors. This is not a criticism by any means--I am sure they are doing everything that they can. I'm merely pointing out how few films are directed by women at this point in time, and how few of those films that do get made get any significant distribution whatsoever. Clearly, institutions like Sundance, most other film festivals, and even the Academy are inclined to recognize as many good films by women as they can. But for whatever reason, women get very few chances to succeed in the film marketplace.

SUNDANCE SHORTS:
IAN OLDS' BOMB

Ian Olds has worked on several really great films over the years, including the Academy Award short-listed documentary feature, Occupation: Dreamland and the extraordinary (according to Mark) suburban tank documentary Cul de Sac, which is not yet available on DVD, unfortunately. Bomb is quite different from either of his doc films, but still quite an achievement. You can watch it HERE and if you like it you can read an interview with him from Filmmaker Magazine (which I have now coincidentally linked to in consecutive postings) and another one from The Reeler.

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.

SUNDANCE AWARDS AND THE BEST SHORTS

We are back from Sundance and had a great time. We won't bore you with details of our social interactions, since there are more entertaining and complete Sundance blogs out there. I'll just say that I didn't get to meet Hammer, or Dakota Fanning, but our friend Casimir did.

Some of our favorite features screening in Park City were:
Zidane
In the Shadow of the Moon
The Great World of Sound
Hot House
Chasing Ghosts
Crossing the Line
Zoo
VHS Kahloucha
It is Fine. Everything is Fine!
Comrades in Dreams

Of course, not everything was so fantastic. Some dissapointing films were:
Manda Bala
Chicago Ten
The Unforeseen
Offscreen

We'll try to talk a little bit more about each of these films over the next few days, but I'll also put together some little segments on the shorts as well and try to point out some of our favorites. You can watch most of them online, either for free or by paying $1.99 for them on iTunes (which really isn't so bad, if you think about it, since a good chunk of that goes to the filmmakers). There were a good number of very good shorts and a few that we thought were truly exceptional. Mark Elijah Rosenberg was on the shorts jury, so obviously he saw al of them. I have seen most of the selections at this point, though not Don Herzfeldt's new short--which everyone says is extraordinary and which won the jury prize. Hopefully Mark will get the chance to blog a little bit about his experience and about his selections. Until then, I will just list the winners:

Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking
"Everything Will Be OK"; directed by Don Hertzfeldt

Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking
"The Tube With a Hat"; directed by Radu Jude

Shorts Jury Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking
"Death to the Tinman"; directed by Ray Tintori
"The Fighting Cholitas"; directed by Mariam Jobrani
"Men Understand Each Other Better" ("Mardha Hamdigar Ra Behtar Mifahmand"); directed by Marjan Alizadeh
"Motodrom"; directed by Joerg Wagner
"Spitfire 944"; directed by William Lorton
"t.o.m."; directed by Tom Brown and Daniel Gray

Feel free to sort through all the shorts yourself, but the Sundance website is a little screwy and I will be posting highlights from the shorts with links to where you can watch the films over the next week or so, so you can also just check back in here daily and I'll give you my recommendations. To start, you should all go watch Ray Tintori's newest short, Death to the Tinman.

THE BEST SCENES FROM
THE REMAKE OF THE WICKER MAN

There was a part of me that wanted to get upset a few years back when I found out that they were making a remake of the Wicker Man--so much so that I couldn't bear to even Netflick the Nicholas Cage version. But having seen this extraordinary YouTube compilation, I now realize that I may have missed out on something incredible. Luckily, the new version just came out on DVD and you better frickin' believe that The Wicker Man (2006) is in my queue now. I don't care about that 87% rotten rating it got. Those reviews are written by guys named WIllie Waffle who say things like "When he was reading the script, and saw the part of the movie where he is supposed to run through the forest in a bear suit, I hope Nicholas Cage asked for a huge pay raise." Personally, I am very glad he didn't ask for a pay raise, because the image of him bear-slapping that nymph is indelibly etched into my brain and it makes me smile every time I think about it. My as yet uninformed opinion is that Cage and LaBute may have somehow actually improved on a classic. I'll update you all when the red envelope arrives.
p.s. I just read that the remake was dedicated to the late Johnny Ramone, who introduced Nicholas Cage to the original. Oh, to have been in the room when Cage and LaBute discussed that tribute.

TONY VS. PAUL

Two million people saw this before I did, including the folks at The House Next Door but that's OK...

JONATHAN REYNOLDS BURIAL AT SEA
I don't really know anything about this Jonathan Reynolds, but this film is pretty magical. Find out (a very little bit) more about him at http://www.jonathanreynolds.co.uk/. Spaghetti Terrestris is also pretty cool...

ROOFTOP SHORTS:
CASMIR NOZKOWSKI'S BODEGA

Longtime Rooftop Films alum, YouTube celebrity, Utz eater and Quarter Water chugger Casimir Nozkowski returns to the Rooftop blog with this homage to really unhealthy food bought cheaply from inner city corner stores. You can watch it HERE.
UPDATE: If you like Bodega, you can also see what happens when they hang out in Park City at
http://www.thedailyreel.com/ or on Cas' youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/CasimirN. The next entry will be the filmmaker episode and features MC Hammer. I saw Gary Coleman on Main Street and told them where to find him, but when they went looking all they could find was Screech.