SXSW WEEKEND AT ROOFTOP FILMS

This weekend at Rooftop Films, is their our long-awaited SXSW Weekend. This year, for the first time, Rooftop worked with the SXSW festival to put together a weekend of films that made their World Premieres at SXSW 2011.  This weekend they will be presenting the New York Premieres of The Dish and the Spoon, with star Greta Gerwig in person, the gorgeous coming of age film No Matter What, and Rooftop Grantee The City Dark (Ian Cheney, King Corn). Friday, June 3, 2011

ROOFTOP FILMS: THE DISH AND THE SPOON (NY Premiere) (Alison Bagnall | Philadelphia, PA | 92 min.) Presented by SXSW and Rooftop Films. SXSW weekend begins with the New York premiere of The Dish and the Spoon. Indie starlet Greta Gerwig and newcomer Olly Alexander put on alternately fierce and delicate performances in this enchantingly offbeat romance about an alienated teen and a woman on the run from a troublesome marriage. Over the last five years, Greta Gerwig has made her mark as one of the most promising young actresses to come out of American independent cinema. Even though she has since appeared in larger Hollywood projects such as Arthur, Gerwig hasn’t lost touch with her indie roots, as proven by her extraordinary performance in Alison Bagnall’s charming feature film. Greta Gerwig and Alison Bagnall will be there in person to answer questions after the film Tickets are $10 online or at the door. Tickets and more information:http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/the-dish-and-the-spoon/ Venue: OPEN ROAD ROOFTOP 350 Grand Street (at Essex), Lower East Side, New York, NY 10002 Subway: F, J, M, Z to Delancey Street-Essex Street; B, D, Q to Grand Street 8:00 PM Doors Open 8:30 PM Live Music by Snowmine 9:00 PM Film Begins 10:30 PM Q and A with filmmaker Alison Bagnall and star Greta Gerwig 11:30 PM After Party at Fontana’s (105 Eldridge St. btwn Grand St. and Broome St.) Plays with: CHIEF SERENBE (Evan Curtis | USA | 5 min.) Music: SNOWMINE Brooklyn’s Snowmine embraces a sound rich with echo pedals, tribal beats, electro-acoustic soundscapes and classical orchestrations. Inspired by love found and lost, forest trips, and circuit bending, it seems their music can be an apt cure for problems strange but beautiful, uplifting but melancholy. The quintet formed in 2008 from a long bubbling friendship between bassist Jay Goodman, drummer Alex Beckmann, and lead singer/composer Grayson Sanders. Many parties, road trips, and treacherous leaky basements fraught with jam sessions later, they met guitarists Austin Mendenhall and Scott Seelig – two wayfarers from D.C. and Los Angeles. The band’s nine-track debut album, Laminate Pet Animal, was recorded with Dave Trumfio (Wilco, My Morning Jacket). Saturday, June 4, 2010

No Matter What – Trailer from Cherie Saulter on Vimeo. ROOFTOP FILMS: NO MATTER WHAT (NY Premiere) (Cherie Saulter | Chipley, FL | 90 min.) Presented by SXSW and Rooftop Films. SXSW Weekend Continues with the story of Nick and Joey, two best friends living in the crumbling landscape of rural Florida, whose lives and friendship are changed by the journey to find Joey’s mother. Teenagers Joey and Nick are navigating the complex landscape of rural Florida on their own — they don’t really have parents, they prefer skateboarding to school. When the pair set out to find Joey’s mother — camping out in drug dealers’ backyards, hopping freight trains — we wonder if, perhaps, they should just keep going. Tickets are $10 online or at the door. Tickets and more information:http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/no-matter-what/ Venue: OPEN ROAD ROOFTOP 350 Grand Street (at Essex), Lower East Side, New York, NY 10002 Subway: F, J, M, Z to Delancey Street-Essex Street; B, D, Q to Grand Street 8:00 PM Doors Open 8:30 PM Live music by Secret Mountains 9:00 PM Film Begins 10:30 PM Q and A with filmmaker Cherie Saulter 11:30 PM After Party at Fontanas (105 Eldridge Street btwn Grand St. and Broome St.) Music: SECRET MOUNTAINS The bulk of the last decade brought Baltimore’s hyper-color acts—the dance epics of Dan Deacon and the guitar spirals of Ecstatic Sunshine and Ponytail, or even the expatriate pop exuberance of Animal Collective—to the central streams of indie rock. Maybe it’s time to pull the shades: Maryland sextet Secret Mountains is a slow, subdued wonder, shaped by serpentine guitar lines that sigh and moan and busy drumming that sidles into the beat and shuffles around it. The surface is supplied by Kelly Laughlin, a singer whose muted alto seems wounded but resilient, like an autumn sun breaking through early morning clouds. This band is bound for bigger rooms.—Grayson Currin   Sunday, June 5, 2011

ROOFTOP FILMS: THE CITY DARK (NY Premiere) (Ian Cheney | Brooklyn, NY | 84 min.) Presented by Rooftop Films, SXSW, and Edgeworx Studios. For thousands of years, the night sky was a crucial part of human experience, but due to light pollution, the stars are disappearing from our vision and consciousness. Would bringing back the sky make us better humans, or save us from some of the harmful effects of modern city life? Our SXSW weekend concludes with the New York premiere of The City Dark. Filmmaker Ian Cheney (Rooftop alum, King Corn) grew up with a deep fascination with the sky — he was even an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer who built his own telescope on his family’s farm in rural Maine. His childhood memories comprise as much looking out, into the universe, as looking around him. When he moved to New York, the relative lack of visible stars was a rude awakening. The difference seemed more than purely aesthetic, and eventually Cheney asked himself how the flood of light, and lack of night sky, could be affecting all creatures on the planet – humans and otherwise. Tickets are $10 online or at the door. Tickets and more information:http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/the-city-dark/ Venue: On the roof of The Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St. (at 3rd Ave.), Gowanus/Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 11215 Subway: F/G to Carroll St. or M/R to Union 8:00 PM Doors Open 8:30 PM Live Music by The Fishermen Three 9:00 PM Film Begins 11:30 PM Reception in the Courtyard Plays with: HELIOTROPES (Michael Langan | San Francisco, CA | 3 min.) HELIOTROPES documents the parallel goals of man and nature, through the most primitive and sophisticated means, to simply stay in the light. Based on the poem by Brian Christian. HOWLING AT THE MOON (Jason Tippett and Elizabeth Mims | Los Angeles, CA | 8 min.) Matt and Harry receive an invitation to see a fellow employees band. To escape the awkward coffee shop performance, Matt comes up with a somewhat decent excuse. Music: FISHERMEN THREE The Fishermen Three play mystical country music and blues of every color. Simon Beins, member of New York City’s weird folk trio The WoWz, writes the songs and plays a few instruments, and Raphi Gottesman provides spiritual guidance, friendship, and percussion. They also wrote the score for The City Dark, which won an award at the SXSW festival.