Rooftop Films: New York Non-Fiction June 18, 2010

VENUE
OPEN ROAD ROOFTOP
Open Road Rooftop
LOWER EAST SIDE
350 GRAND ST., NEW YORK, NY 10002
F, J, M, Z to Delancey Street-Essex Street; B, D, Q to Grand Street
8:00 Doors Open
8:30 Live Music
9:00 Films begin
11:30 After-party: Open Bar at Fontana's (105 Eldridge St.)

NEW YORK NON-FICTION (short films)

Scratches, beats, and elegies from New York City.

New York City scratches, splashes, survives, creates, gets sick, dies, makes music, mourns, becomes activated, does its hair, and is reborn in a different shape to do it all again - or to do something entirely different. This year's New York Non-Fiction program traces this city and its citizens, both remembered and forgotten. New York has changed a lot over the past 30 years and yet so much is still there, under facades, behind trees, under layers of the new. It is still New York, full of struggle, of possibility, of hope.

- Sarah Palmer

Prior to the films we will be screening The Hardest Working Baker in America, presented by Mitchum. The video is part of The Hardest Working Person in America, a campaign to find, highlight and reward the hardest working man or woman in the country based on video submissions to the contest site mitchumhardestworking.com. A collaboration between Hollywood director Brett Ratner, filmmaker Albert Maysles and photographer Brigitte Lacombe, the campaign comes to life in a series of documentary films, a television special, and in digital and print. The Hardest Working Person in America celebrates the great American tradition of hard work and is proudly brought to you by the Hardest Working anti-perspirant in America, Mitchum.

Presented in partnership with: IFC, New York magazine, Open Road NY, New Design High School, Fontanas, the NYC Council Manhattan Delegation & NYS Senator Daniel L. Squadron
THE FILMS

ANATINUS (David Wanger | Brooklyn, NY | 2 min.)
Anatinus is a musical cinematographical voyage into the hazy early hours of the day in miraculous industrial Greenpoint. mambafever.com

UNNATURAL HISTORY OF WALL STREET (Gary Leib | New York. NY | 1 min.)
Wall Street through a metaphorical lens comes alive on a sheet of notebook paper. twinkleland.com

THE COMMONERS (Penny Lane & Jessica Bardsley | New York, NY | 12:30 min.)
In 1890, a wealthy eccentric named Eugene Schieffelin collected every bird ever mentioned by Shakespeare and released them into Central Park. The only one to survive in the New World was the European Starling, now among the commonest - and most despised - birds in America. p-lane.com | jessicabardsley.com

POOL (Lila Place | Brooklyn, NY | 4 min.)
This sweet short from Rooftop vet Lila Place dives into a crucial New York summertime experience: the Red Hook Pool. lilaplace.com

A HARLEM MOTHER (Ivana Todorovic | New York, NY | 10 min.)
Life is good as long as you're living. A tragedy inspires a mother toward action, in the hopes of stopping deaths of the innocent by gun violence. A reason to get out of bed in the morning.

CLOSENESS (Danilo Parra | Bronx, NY | 22 min.)
They say faith is the belief in things unseen. In this beautiful and moving documentary about Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, a nearly forgotten 74-year-old jazz musician, we see years of struggle - of an artist unable to do anything but make music, of his own push and pull with drugs, against getting older. The film centers on the recording of his album Closeness, which abstractly tells the story of his love for his wife, nearly 30 years his junior. danilop.com

HAIR MAN (Zach Timm & Matthew Rivera | New York, NY | 3:19 min.)
There is no place to hide for the Mystery Hair Man of Williamsburg. They - or we - are watching his every move. aligned-creative.com

DRUNK HISTORY VOL. 1: HAMILTON AND BURR (Jeremy Konner, Derek Waters | Los Angeles, CA | 5:36 min.)
An informative re-telling of the famous duel. By a really, really wasted dude. Featuring Michael Cera as Alexander Burr. I mean Hamilton.

PRINCE/WILLIAM (Keith Miller | Brooklyn, NY | 8 min.)
Prince/William is the true story of a single confrontation over a dog found in a rapidly changing neighborhood. keith-miller.com

SELTZER WORKS (Jessica Edwards | Brooklyn, NY | 7 min.)
In this short and bubbly documentary, the last bottler in Brooklyn fends off the supermarket seltzer take-over and honors this simple drink's place in history. seltzerworks.com

LAST ADDRESS (Ira Sachs | New York, NY | 8 min.)
A meditation on New York City buildings - both familiar and anonymous - that once housed artists who helped shape the cultural fabric of New York City. All of these artists, including Joe Brainard, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Reinaldo Arenas, died of AIDS. irasachs.com