Rooftop Films: Capucine: Filmmaking Monkeys and Other Renegades July 29, 2010

VENUE
BROOKLYN TECH
Roof of Brooklyn Technical High School
FORT GREENE
29 FORT GREENE PLACE, BROOKLYN, NY 11217
G to Fulton, C to Lafayette, 2,3,4,5 to Nevins or B,M,Q, R to Dekalb
8:00 Doors open
8:30 Live music
9:00 Films begin

Crazy characters who make their own rules, as cake-addicted cranks, Rambo-revering detectives, and an actual filmmaking monkey. Plus a live performance by fabulist filmmaker Luis Nieto.

As Sean Sharpstone says, in this program of short films, "rules to take a backseat to justice, and justice rides shotgun, 'cuz that bitch is blind." With these movies, morals are tossed out the window like a hot gun, ethics are blown away like eyelashes, and basic ideas of decency are disregarded in favor of obscure passions, wild fun, and misguided ideas of genius. Because nobody makes movies about those who toe the line and play by the rules-real heroes live outside society's norms. There's often a downside to forging your outrageous destiny-a melancholy solitude, perhaps, or a gruesome demise-but the journey is always enjoyable. With outlandish comedies, amazing animations, and daring documentaries, this program of remarkable renegades is sure to astound.

- Mark Elijah Rosenberg

Presented in partnership with: IFC, New York magazine, Brooklyn Technical High School & Council Member Leticia James
THE FILMS

RENEGADES (Jim Hosking | Los Angeles, CA | 12 min.)
Oh them renegades . . . pleasuring themselves again . . . waiting for the mighty rain . . . to purge their souls of all their pain. renegadesfilm.com

EYELASHES (Marcel Hobi | Switzerland | 7 min.)
If an eyelash falls out, lay it on the back of your hand, make a wish as you blow it away--and your wish will come true! Or so popular belief has it. But wishing is not easy if everything is already perfect. The squiggly-animated Wanner's life is perfect. All the same, Wanner is constantly endeavoring to optimize his everyday life with an eyelash. A balancing act between the ideal and reality. looping-animation.ch

WASP (Mari Jaye Blanchard | Brooklyn, NY | 2 min.)
In this lovely and haunting animation, a dour little girl innocently traps a potential threat, but isn't prepared to deal with the ethical consequences of her actions. marijayeblanchard.com

DEAD SEE-QUENCE (Fabio Scacchioli | Italy | 4:10 min.)
A sensual experimental film-hand-drawn animation on 3770 frames of vintage pornographic found footage-about the vanishing of an image, a naked body, the most tangible and real thing for a human being. But this is not a body; it is the image of a body. In this gap lies the principle of disappearance: between the object and its image there is a distance, a limit, a separation. This distance is seen here in as the original sin. fabioscacchioli.jimdo.com

BLOOD FROM A STONE (Bill Palmer | Los Angeles, CA | 8:21 min.)
Before Jason Bourne insisted that action cinema start taking itself seriously, there was a time when muscle-bound macho men would break arms, sever limbs and spit one-liners without ever hesitating to muse about rules, consequences or ethical behavior. That time was the 1980s. Those men had names like Arnold, Sly, Dolph and Chuck. PG-13 was not in their vocabulary. And you can bet your ass it's not in Sean Sharpstone's either. wcpalmer.com

LIVE PERFORMANCE BY LUIS NIETO (Nieto | France | 15 min.)
The filmmaking fabulist Nieto brings his magic to the United States for a performance that's part conference lecturer part freakshow.

CAPUCINE (Luis Nieto | France & Japan | 43 min.)
Luis Nieto is a pioneer of using animals in his off-beat animations and cinematic experiments, and we've shown a number of his outlandish films at Rooftop in the past. So Nieto dove right in to oedipe-project.com, where Japanese primatologist Hirokazu Shibuya is training monkeys to be filmmakers. Capucine traces the adorable but sometimes frightening modern history of primate-human relations as service animals to the disabled and in on-screen appearances in Hollywood. Nieto discovers an amazing cinematic aptitude among these Capuchin monkeys, and with the right film school training, one monkey auteur manages to accomplish what few human filmmakers can-his film is accepted to a prestigious European film festival.

Official Website: http://www.rooftopfilms.com/2010/schedule/31-capucine-filmmaking-monkeys-and-other-renegades