Rooftop Films Opening Weekend: May 13th

Friday, May 13th
Opening Night: This is What We Mean by Short Films

Venue: Open Road Rooftop, 350 Grand Street @ Essex (Lower East Side)
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 Dustin Wong
9:00 PM Films Begin
11:30 PM After Party at Fontanas
Tickets and more info at: http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/this-is-what-we-mean-by-short-films-2/
Rooftop opens our 15th annual festival with a flash of creativity, a splatter of inspiration, and short epic stories that could save your life.

A simple line drawing fleetingly becomes a recognizable face, then morphs into something disturbing. An obliterating splatter of paint describes the history of the universe. A prophesy of doom comes blissfully alive. The forces of creation and destruction battle epically within and around us at all times, at atomic, 8-bit and astronomical levels. David O’Reilly’s masterful fragmented universe The External World reminds us “Remember this is merely a cartoon. None of this is real. . . . There is only a silent emptiness spreading infinitely in all directions.” But at this, the start of Rooftop’s 15th year of existence, we begin with short films that celebrate creativity as a necessary means to survival. The piano players know, “She can’t kill me while I’m playing.”

The Films:

LOVE & THEFT (Andreas Hykade | Germany | 7 min.)
The driving pulse of transformation reveals moments of terror and beauty amidst images familiar and domestic.

OOPS (Chris Beckman | Springfield, MO | 10 min.)
Conjuring creative connections out of mundane happenstance, Oops—composed entirely of appropriated YouTube videos—lies somewhere between a home-video mixtape and a postmodern travelogue.

THE EXTERNAL WORLD (David O'Reilly | Ireland | 15 min.)
A boy learns to play the piano.

THE PIANO TUNER (Olivier Treiner | France | 13 min.)
Adrien is a young piano prodigy. He now works as a piano tuner. He pretends to be blind in order to infiltrate his clients' intimacy. Since he sees things he should not, Adrien ends up witnessing a murder.

HEARTPOCALYPSE (Matthew Silver | Brooklyn, NY | 7 min.)
In a dynamic bit of spontaneous street art, a crazed doomsayer ranting underneath a Brooklyn subway track brings to life his worst nightmares—and the crowd loves it.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM (Blu | Italy | 10 min.)
This ingenious animation uses the city as its canvas in a short unscientific story about evolution and its possible consequences.

LEDO AND IX BATTLE EPICALLY (Emily Carmichael | Brooklyn, NY | 4 min.)
The third in a series of films about two adventurers in an old-school fantasy video game. Ledo, the tiny 8-bit heroine, has been obsessively upgrading her weapons and tirelessly honing her attacks, all in preparation for great battles that have never materialized. Supported by the Rooftop Filmmakers' Fund.

YEARBOOK (Carter Smith | New York, NY | 10 min.)
The yearbook photo never tells the whole story in this creepy portrait of small town high school sexuality from the award-winning creator of Bugcrush.

PIONEER (David Lowery | Dallas, TX | 15 min.)
A father (Will Oldham) tells his little boy the most epic bedtime story ever.