Rooftop Films: The Ape July 23, 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 Film begins

NY Premiere! A man awakens on the floor, covered in blood and apparently unaware of how he got there. He heads off to work, and we follow...

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

THE APE (APAN) (Jesper Ganslandt | Sweden | 77 min.)
"In Jesper Ganslandt, Sweden has a new star director."
--Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Sarri is phenomenal as Krister, an icy, utterly unpredictable blank canvas. Ganslandt directs with tremendous precision, creating a mood of brooding, implacable threat."
--Tom Huddleston, Time Out London

Rooftop and the Swedish Film Institute partner to presemt The Ape, an intense and riveting psychological thriller from one of Europe's most daring new filmmakers. To convey a sense of perpetual disorientation, director Jesper Ganslandt used an unconventional method: the lead actor, Olle Sarri, was never allowed to read the script. Instead he was led to locations and given a set of instructions before the filming of each scene, unaware of the full plot until filming was completed. The result is at turns mesmerizing, disquieting and genuinely harrowing, but never is the film anything less than unique.

To describe the plot of The Ape much further would diminish the extraordinary experience of watching it for the first time. For stretches of the film the audience is unsure of what has unfolded prior, but as the film moves along and the backstory becomes more clear there is still a tantalizing indefinable sense that something is terribly wrong - not just with Sarri's protagonist, but with the entire world into which we have entered. We are made to feel that we are following-perhaps even chasing - a man who acts without motivation or a sense of self. But as his story continues to move forward, Ganslandt seems to be suggesting that he is not necessarily an exceptionally damaged man, but might instead be all too typical.

About the Swedish Film Institute:
Since 1963, The Swedish Film Institute has been working to support the production of new films, the distribution and screening of the best of Sweden's cinema, to preserve and promote Sweden's film heritage and to represent Swedish film at an international level. Rooftop Films is excited to partner with the Institute for the first time in 2010 to bring some of the best new Swedish films to the rooftops and grassy fields of New York City.

Official Website: http://www.rooftopfilms.com/2010/schedule/30-the-ape