CASIMIR NOZKOWSKI'S SPAM!

The newest film by lo-fi YouTube superstar/long-time Rooftop Films alum Cas Nozkowski stares into the blackened soul of the professional spammer. I have a friend who occasionally sleeps with this guy who designs pop-up ads and I have always wanted to meet him one day and ask him what the hell he is thinking. Perhaps he would also wear puffy coats indoors in the summer.

TOTALLY OFF MISSION

OK, so this has nothing to do with indpendent films or the Rooftop Films Summer Series or microcinemas, but Human Tetris sure is awesome. Hat tip to office mate Josh Pelzek

THE NEW DRESS AND THE SUBJECTS ADDED TO THE 4TH OF JULY SLATE

Two great indie rock bands have signed on for our incredible 4th of July show. Red Leader Records' The New Dress will be playing at 6:00 and Pretty Activity's The Subjects will be playing at 7:00, followed by Vic Thrill + The Saturn Missile at 8:00, followed by the fireworks and some really extraordinary short films.
p.s. Check out this cute interview with The Subjects in Gothamist. Hat tip to former intern Danielle.

WATCH FOUR EYED MONSTER FOR FREE
AND SAVE TWO INDIE FILMMAKERS FROM ETERNAL DEBT!

Join Spout Buy DVD Watch Video Podcast Get Code

For those of you who don't already know this:

Erin Crumley and Susan Buice are really wonderfully sweet, helpful, hard-working filmmakers who made a very good film called Four Eyed Monsters and rung up a HUGE personal debt in the process. Please listen to their plea above (in YouTube format) and below (in English text format). Give them a chance to convince you to join Spout. If you join it costs you nothing and they get a buck. If enough people do it, they get out of debt. Pretty good deal for everyone, right? At least hear them out, won't you?

This is their message:
Hello everyone,
We need everyone's help. We need you to join this site and they will give us one dollar, and after you join, you'll be taken to a page where you can watch our entire 71 minute film for free.
So this will not cost you anything, and you'll get to see our film for free. Check out the link here and please forward to everyone you know:
http://www.spout.com/foureyedmonsters
We've gotten over 25,000 people to join and if we can get 100,000 then we'll be out of debt. So please, even if you don't want to watch our film, take a second to join and help us get out of debt so we can keep making films and not have to go back to working day jobs to pay off
our credit card debt.

Thanks a bunch,
Arin & Susan

WATCH ROOFTOP FILMS ON IFC.COM
* 100 OF THE BEST FILMS FROM THE ROOFTOP FILMS SUMMER SERIES NOW ONLINE AT IFC.COM—A NEW SHORT EVERY DAY
* FRIDAY, JUNE 8: OFFICIAL OPENING NIGHT ON A ROOF IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE

For 11 years, Rooftop Films has been a champion of short films. In fact, for the first several years of our existence, all we screened was short films--and we were quite happy about that. A program of short films can create a communal feeling that works perfectly at an outdoor screening. When making a short film, a filmmaker is free of the costs and conventions that often burden a feature film production, ans some of the most innovative films in the world are shorts. We love short films and for years we have worked tirelessly to promote shorts and to raise their profile closer to that of the feature film. And now we’reone step closer. Rooftop Films is proud to partner with IFC.com to present 100 short films from our festival online.

Since 1994, The Independent Film Channel, IFC.com and IFC Films have been creating the movies that people talk about, working with directors who receive accolades for taking chances, and bringing the best, brightest (and darkest) independently-produced films to audiences around the world. They have worked long and hard to bring these films to the airwaves and distribute them theatrically, and now they are also focusing their attention on bringing some of these great independent cinema to audiences via the internet. We couldn't think of a better organization to partner with to promote these fantastic films.

WATCH A NEW FILM EVERY DAY
Each and every morning from today through September 22nd, you can visit our dedicated Rooftop Films page on IFC.com to see some of the best short films in the world. There are four films up there right now to watch and there are 96 more to come. All the shorts will stay online until at least the end of 2007, so very soon there will be a huge library of extraordinary films to peruse and enjoy. The films we are selecting will come from all over the world and will span every imaginable genre in the short film universe. There will be everything from an animation about lovers meeting in a dystopic factory, to a comedy about a bizarre stalker looking for dietary advice; from an artful documentary about the beauty of carniverous plants, to a satire that somehow manages to find humor in the execution of the mentally challenged in Texas. Rooftop Films receives more than 2,000 short film submissions a year and we are choosing the very best of these shorts to stream on IFC.com. The Rooftop Films page on IFC.com will be one of the most exclusive online collections of great shorts available anywhere in digital world.

SUBMIT YOUR FILMS TO THE
SLO-MO HORROR FEST

the slowness waits...
the slowness attacks...
the slowness kills...
when the bell tolls...
like a whisper..
June 15th...
June 15th...
Juuuuuuuuuunnnnnneeeeeeeee 111111111555555555ttttthhhhhh!!!!

Our friend Ryan Junell has a new project, and it's so cool I wish that I had thought of it first. Ryan put together the original Slo-Mo fest in 2006 and it was tremendously fun, wondefully weird, and occasionally transcendent. Now he has expanded on the concept--100 one minute long videos, all of them done in slo-mo--but this time he is only looking for the scary stuff. Ryan is a big fan of the sublimely screwed-up film, so I am confident it will turn out awesome. Here are the details:

postmark YOUR entry by june 15th to participate in
the scariest... the slowest... film and video massacre ever!
SsssLlllOooooMmmmOooooo HORRRRRRRROOOORRRRRR!!!!!!!
100 One Minute Slow Motion Horror Films by
100 Filmmakers and Video Artists
get the bloody details at http://slomohorror.com/

SENTENCED HOME PREMIERES
ON INDEPENDENT LENS

One of the most powerful documentaries from the 2006 Summer Series is premiering next week on PBS. SENTENCED HOME airs this coming Tuesday, May 15 at 10PM on PBS as part of the Emmy-award winning series “Independent Lens”.

*Check your local listings for exact date and time in your area here

Putting a human face on controversial immigration policy, SENTENCED HOME follows three young Cambodian Americans through the deportation process. Raised in inner-city Seattle, they pay an unbearable price for mistakes they made as teenagers. Caught between their tragic pasts and an uncertain future, each young man confronts a legal system that offers no second chances.

DID YOU REALLY THINK DO THE RIGHT THING
WAS SET IN BED-STUY?

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.