Rooftop Films 2017: Cinema & Skylines

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 29 June 2017 15:32

Written by Brad Balfour

 

Encompassing shorts, documentaries, features, animation, foreign directors, and home-grown heroes, the Rooftop Films series features daring films set against New York’s skyline. Running through August 19, multiple venues in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Long Island City play host to the film series, with each venue providing a unique backdrop and personality to the fest.

 

Films include:

• The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani)
  On the roof of The Old American Can Factory. 232 Third St. Brooklyn
  If you have it, spend it: Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s visually striking documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs who moonlight as amateur falconers, with no expenses spared along the way. The Challenge follows these men through the rituals that define their lives: perilously racing blacked-out SUVs up and down sand dunes; sharing communal meals; taking their Ferraris out for a spin with their pet cheetahs riding shotgun; and much more. Ancarani’s film is a sly meditation on the collective pursuit of idiosyncratic desires.

 

• Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary)
  On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan
  After 25 years of secluded existence with his protective parents in their isolated, off-the-grid home, James (Kyle Mooney) is tossed out into a new life in relatively daunting Cedar Hills, Utah. As his world upends, the most shocking revelation to James is that he’s the only person who has ever watched his favorite television program, Brigsby Bear Adventures. Struggling to adjust to the show’s abrupt end, he begins to see Brigsby’s lessons as his only way to make sense of a big, scary new world, and James decides to make a movie to end Brigsby’s story—and re-begin his own.

 

• The Incredible Jessica James (Jim Strouse)
  On the roof of The William Vale. 111 N 12th St. Brooklyn
  Jessica Williams (“The Daily Show”) stars as a young, aspiring playwright in New York City who is struggling to get over a recent breakup. She is forced to go on a date with the recently divorced Boone, played by Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids) and the unlikely duo discover how to make it through the tough times in a social media obsessed post-relationship universe. Lakeith Stanfield (FX’s “Atlanta”, Straight Outta Compton) and Noël Wells (Netflix’s “Master of None”) co-star. The film was written and directed by Jim Strouse and produced by Michael B. Clark and Alex Turtletaub of Beachside. Jessica Williams and Kerri Hundley serve as executive producers.

 

• Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators (Ema Ryan Yamazaki)
  On the roof of the JCC in Manhattan. 334 Amsterdam Ave. Manhattan
  Featuring a narrow escape from the Nazis on makeshift bicycles, Monkey Business explores the extraordinary lives of Hans and Margret Rey, the authors of the beloved Curious George children’s books.
  New York Premiere.

 

• Trapped: Uncanny Short Films
  In the courtyard of Industry City. 274 36 St. Brooklyn
  Join us for a program of stories most unusual: the meeting of a spaceman and a cave man; an encounter with an alien phenomenon via public access television; and the imagined experiences of the forgotten subject of a famous photograph. These amusing and disquieting short films offer mix-tape portraits, analytic tragicomedies of infinite human desire and potentially-killer workplace procedurals. Experience startling cinematic spectacles you won’t soon forget.

 

And many more films!

 

To learn more, go to: http://www.rooftopfilms.com/

Rooftop Films
Through August 19

Various Venues