Rooftop Films 17^th Annual Summer Series

Rooftop Films’ 17^th Annual Summer Series already underway. The festival features over 45 outdoor screenings with huge audiences, live music, spectacular venues, and the best in new, independent, and foreign films. With live performances, audience interaction, and enhanced themed events at amazing new venues, Rooftop will make each event unique and memorable.

12 O’Clock Boys (Dir. Lotfy Nathan) NY Premiere
Part of Rooftop’s SXSW weekend
Pug, a young boy growing up on a combative West Baltimore block, finds solace in a group of illegal dirt bike riders known as The 12 O’Clock Boys. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (Dir. David Lowery) Special Sneak Preview – August 15
“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” tells the tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Awful Nice (Dir. Todd Sklar) NY Premiere – August 9
Part of Rooftop’s SXSW weekend
Estranged brothers Jim and Dave must travel to Branson together when their father dies and leaves them the family lake home. A series of hilarious mishaps and costly misadventures follow as they attempt to restore the house and rebuild their relationship.

Belleville Baby (Dir. Mia Engberg) NY Premiere – July 6
A long distance call from a long lost lover makes her reminisce about their common past. She remembers the spring when they met in Paris, the riots, the vespa and the cat named Baby. A film about love, time and things that got lost along the way.

Bending Steel (Dir. David Carroll, produced by Ryan Scafuro) – July 8

A remarkable and intimate documentary exploring the lost art of the old time strongman, and one man’s struggle to overcome limitations of body and mind.

Brasslands (Dir. Meerkat Media Collective) NY Premiere – July 13
Presented by Rooftop Films and Arts Brookfield
Devoted American musicians, Serbian brass heavyweights, and a Gypsy trumpet master collide at the world’s largest trumpet festival.

The Central Park Five (Dir. Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, Dave McMahon) – June 18
Free screening presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarksold Plaza
Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, The Central Park Five tells the story of how five lives were upended by the rush to judgment by police, a sensationalist media and a devastating miscarriage of justice. Courtesy of Florentine Films.

Crystal Fairy (Dir. Sebastián Silva) Special Sneak Preview – June 28
Presented by Rooftop Films and indieWIRE
A hilariously unpredictable comedy about a self-involved young American searching for a secret hallucinogenic cactus in the desert of Chile. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Cutie and the Boxer (Dir. Zachary Heinzerling) Special Sneak Preview – August 3

This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of renowned “boxing” painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role of assistant to her overbearing husband, Noriko seeks an identity of her own. Courtesy of RADiUs-TWC.

The Dirties (Dir. Matt Johnson) NY Premiere – June 1
Matt and Owen are best friends, who are constantly bullied by a group they call The Dirties. When an assignment goes awry, the friends hatch a plan to enact revenge on their high school tormentors.

Domestic (Dir. Adrian Sitaru) NY Premiere – July 31
Presented with Socrates Sculpture Park.
Wonderfully surreal, painfully real, this is the story of children, adults and animals who live together trying to have a better life, but sometimes death comes unexpectedly. In the bittersweet comedy Domestic it is all about us, people who eat the animals that they love and the animals that love people unconditionally.

Drinking Buddies (Dir. Joe Swanberg) NY Premiere – June 27

Presented in partnership with BAMcinemaFest
Luke and Kate are co-workers at a Chicago brewery where they spend their days drinking and flirting. They’re perfect for each other, except that they’re both in relationships. But you know what makes the line between “friends” and “more than friends” really blurry? Beer.
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Elena (Dir. Petra Costa) NY Premiere – August 10
Part of Rooftp’s SXSW weekend
Intimate in style, Elena delves into the abyss of one family’s drama, revealing at once the inspiration that can be born from tragedy.

The Expedition to the End of the World (Dir. Daniel Dencik) NY Premiere – August 1
A real adventure film – for the 21st century. On a three-mast schooner packed with artists, scientists and ambitions worthy of Noah or Columbus, they set off for the end of the world: the rapidly melting massifs of North-East Greenland. 

F— for Forest (Dir. Michal Marczak) NY Premiere – August 16

Berlin’s F— for Forest is one of the world’s most bizarre charities: based on the idea that sex can change the world, the NGO raises money for their environmental cause by selling home-made erotic films on the Internet.

The Genius of Marian (Dir. Banker White) – June 25
Free screening presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarksold Plaza
An intimate family portrait that explores the tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease, the power of art and the meaning of family. “The Genius of Marian” follows Pam White in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease as her son, the filmmaker, documents her struggle to hang on to a sense of self.

i hate myself :) (Dir. Joanna Arnow) NY Premiere – July 19
Nebbishy filmmaker Joanna Arnow documents her yearlong relationship with racially charged poet-provocateur James Kepple. What starts out as an uncomfortably intimate portrait of a dysfunctional relationship and protracted mid-twenties adolescence, quickly turns into a complex commentary on societal repression, sexuality and self-confrontation through art.

Newlyweeds (Dir. Shaka King) Special Sneak Preview – July 18

Brooklyn residents Lyle and Nina blaze away the stress of living in New York City, but what should be a match made in stoner heaven turns into a love triangle gone awry. Courtesy of Phase 4 Films.

North of South, West of East (Dir. Meredith Danluck) NY Premiere – August 2
Free screening presented with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Forest City Ratner
North of South, West of East takes a scrupulous look at the American Dream through Hollywood tropes and conventional cinema. Working with a narrative structure this four-part 85 minute film takes the chronic existential crisis that is the American identity and turns it inside out, laying the typical components of comedy, thrill, violence, love and death (the ultimate reinvention) neatly side by side.

Our Nixon (Dir. Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye) FREE Sneak Preview – July 3
Presented with Socrates Sculpture Park.
Throughout Richard Nixon’s presidency, three of his top White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with Super 8 home movie cameras. Young, idealistic and dedicated, they had no idea that a few years later they’d all be in prison. “Our Nixon” is an all-archival documentary presenting those home movies for the first time, along with other rare footage, creating an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency as never seen before. 

Presented in partnership with the Academy’s Oscars Outdoors series
Short Term 12 follows Grace (Brie Larson), a young supervisor at a foster-care facility, as she looks after the teens in her charge and reckons with her own troubled past.

Tiger Tail in Blue (Dir. Frank V. Ross) NY Premiere – June 22
Tiger Tail in Blue is about a young married couple, Christopher & Melody, that work opposite schedules to remain financially afloat as Chris bangs out his first novel while working nights as a waiter. Never seeing each other is taking its toll, as the two rarely get a chance to engage one another. Chris finds the attention he craves in the past and Brandy, a saucy co-worker.

Towheads (Dir. Shannon Plumb) Special Sneak Preview – July 25
A harried New York mother struggling as an artist searches for a happy (if slightly unhinged) hybrid of the two. In her debut feature, Shannon Plumb’s charming Chaplin-like characters light up the screen with visual playfulness.

Twenty Feet From Stardom (Dir. Morgan Neville) Special FREE Sneak Preview – June 8
Presented in partnership with the Academy’s  Oscars Outdoors series
Meet the unsung heroes behind the greatest music of our time. Courtesy of RADiUs-TWC.

William and the Windmill (Dir. Ben Nabors) – July 2
Free screening presented with the Ford Foundation and Friends of Dag Hammarksold Plaza
William Kamkwamba, a young Malawian, builds a power-generating windmill from junk parts to rescue his family from famine, transforming his life and catapulting him on to the world stage. His fame and success lead him to new opportunities and complex choices about his future, distancing him from the life he once knew.

Rooftop is on the cutting edge of supporting filmmakers in ways unlike any other festival, including via the ever-expanding Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund, which uses community-generated funds and creative partnerships to assist emerging directors. Audiences will get to see work by filmmakers that they have helped support since the start of their careers. Rooftop will be screening many works by grantees in 2013, including two films that premiered at Sundance: the hit western Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, directed by David Lowery, and Newlyweeds, a stoner romantic comedy directed by Shaka King.