The New York Underground Film Festival went six feet under in 2008, concluding a fifteen year run. In part, the festival chose to close because the programmers thought the idea of “underground” cinema wasn’t relevant to what they wanted to do, and they were looking to re-brand. Perhaps the need and appeal of the underground is played out, what with luxury condos surrounding the festival’s home at Anthology Film Archives, other “underground” film festivals coming and going around the world, and the rise of online video that allows any amateur or avant-gardist to be seen by millions. (NYUFF smartly embraced YouTube in its infancy with a round-robin slam called “Tube Time” and, before that, “Google Me This”). Read More »
Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; click here for all of his coverage from this year’s SXSW Festival.
Back from Austin, TX and the SXSW Film and Music festival, more has changed than the weather and the rate of films I’m watching per day (from 4 to 5 a day in Austin to 10 to 12 here in New York City during Rooftop’s main programming season). I had a fantastic festival, and it’s always hard to leave the good times behind. Still, there’s something unpleasantly cathartic about air travel. I didn’t want to leave, but after airport drudgery, I’m glad to be home. Now my hometown, New York, feels like an urban space where here and there someone planted a tree, maybe laid down a park. Meanwhile, Austin feels like scrubland, where sidewalks and houses fight to stay rooted. In NYC, nature feels unnatural. But it feels like home. See you next year, Austin!
Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for a few more reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew to trickle in today.
“It takes courage to tell someone you love them,” says Shelly, the lead (Stella Schnabel) in Ry Russo-Young’s second feature film, You Wont Miss Me. It also takes courage to be loved, as the disturbed young Shelly discovers within the push and pull of her downtown dropout artist scene. With a jet-setting mother and a big house in the country, we know Shelly comes from a certain set of privileges; but with a shrink who callously has seen her problems before and with a set of friends who pride themselves in grubby authenticity, Shelly also comes with a certain set of emotional baggage — designer baggage, intentionally scuffed, the zippers busted, the fabric frayed, emotions spilling out in a dysfunctional display.
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Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for film reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew throughout the week.
If you’re going to a bunch of SXSW films this year, you’ve probably seen David Lowery’s name in the credits a lot. Among other things, he edited It Was Great But I Was Ready to Come Home, worked on Beeswax, and was listed simply as “right hand man” on Alexander the Last.
At Rooftop, we screened David’s short film A Catalogue of Anticipations in 2008, at our “Surreal Sounds and Shorts” screening, co-presented with MoMA. The short is a strange and wistful fable with a little girl and a skeleton fairy, a unique film in tone, style, and subject matter — fairly different from the mumblecore films he’s collaborating on. So I was thrilled to see he had his debut feature here at SXSW, and my expectation has been rewarded. St. Nick is a stunning film, all the more resonant because it clearly comes from the same movement of realist movies here at SXSW, but has a distinct care for rich visuals and thought-provoking audio, qualities that are often lacking in these other films, which concentrate primarily on getting quotidian performances with a simple verite style.
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Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for film reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew throughout the week.
I’m not gonna name drop or reveal plans, and I’m not trying to brag on being busy, but this was how I spent yesterday at SXSW, and this is why I love a good film festival:
+ 5 movies seen
+ 5 introductions to filmmakers made
+ 1 meeting held with PR person about marketing and PR roll-out for Rooftop’s various initiatives
+ 1 meeting held with a film producer about special screening at Rooftop with doc subject, art installation, walking tour, and more
+ 1 meeting held with European programmer about live, cross-Atlantic simultaneous screening with web-cam link
+ 2 meetings held with different social justice outreach film coordinators
+ # ongoing talks with US programmer about curating a collaborative, serial film production
+ 3 parties attended
+ 3 rides taken on the Winnebago
+ 2 pitches developed for Winnebago Man horror sequels
+ 3 Twitter film reviews written
+ 1 Flavorwire film review written
+ Many, many, many conversations about films talked and chatted and debated
What a pleasure and an honor it is to do this stimulating work.
Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for film reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew throughout the week.
One of the enjoyable challenges of 45365 (a documentary portrait of Sidney, Ohio, made by brothers Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, native sons) is just how difficult it is to write about. Like the old joke about the dancer asked to explain her dance, to which she replies, “If I could explain it, I wouldn’t go to all the trouble of dancing it.” With a free-form verite film like 45365, the only way to explain it: to describe every luscious and gritty shot, football fields, factories, fist fights and fair grounds; to perform all the flatly fantastic dialogue, pre-teen peer pressure, high school heartbreak, adult disillusionment; to replicate all the parade noise broadcast on local radio, the train rumble that rattles the windows, the melody of Midwest life = to go to all the trouble of making it.
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Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; look for film reviews from him and the rest of the Rooftop crew throughout the week!
Jack Rebney. The World’s Angriest Man. A middle aged Winnebago salesman going nuts. You’ve all seen the clip. We even showed it at Rooftop Films as part of the Found Footage Fest.
You’d think by now Rebney would’ve climbed into a tower and capped a few folks, or parlayed his internet infamy into a short-lived late-night cable show, or at least sold his cussing clips as cell phone ring tones or something. But in fact, no one has heard a peep from him — not even those who’ve tried to find him. Until now.
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