Home Movies
Fragile memories, preserved (and distorted) in motion pictures. Fun, fascinating, personal and profound.

***Buy Tickets ***
SAT., AUGUST 18, 2007
8:30 PM - Live music by La Laque (details)
9:00 PM - The films

On the lawn along the Gowanus Canal at The Yard
400 Carroll Street (btw. Bond / Nevins - Carroll Gardens)
Directions:
F / G to Carroll at Smith, walk 3 blocks east (downhill) on Carroll
-or-
M / R to Union, walk 2 blocks south to a left on Carroll.
Rain Date: Sunday, August 12. Check www.rooftopfilms.com or call
718-417-7362 for updates
Tickets -$8 at the door or $5 online with the code RFFIVE.

Presented in partnership with - IFC.com, New York magazine & Mean Red Productions

Saturday night, we back to head to The Yard for one more show. For those of you who didn't make it to our show last Saturday, The Yard is a new venue in Gowanus that is just a few blocks down the block from the Old American Can Factory. The Yard is lovely, peaceful, rustic and unique--the perfect place for some great Music by La Laque followed by the 2007 edition of our annual Home Movies program.

In more ways than one, Rooftop’s “Home Movies” program is our signature show. These films are all about the direct approach, the personal story, the raw humor, humiliation and humanity of real life -- they tell the story of how people live and where they live. But though all of these films utilize the tropes and conventions of personal, home-made videos, not all of them are home movies in the conventional sense.

Some of these films are artfully clipped together footage of the filmmakers' vacations, recreation, and personal struggles; some feature sightings of extra terrestrial aircraft and are obviously not entirely real; some mix together actual home movie footage and surreal comic narratives; and many are coy about the extent to which they are real documents or carefully crafted narrative simulacra. But all of these selections play off the traditional conventions of personal video and the unpredictable quality of real life to tell very real stories. Much more than self-indulgent video diaries or gimmicky mockumentaries, these are films that show life as it is lived in a world in which the camera is always rolling.

THE FILMS:
Spitfire 944 (William Lorton | Los Angeles, CA | 14:00)
The filmmaker discovers dozens of rolls of film his grandfather shot during WWII, and attempts to locate some of the soldiers who appear on camera. When he shows, for the first time, an 83-year old World War II pilot the 16mm footage of his spectacular plane crash, the images bring the memories flooding back.

How to Build a Better Rocket Ship
(Michael Palmieri | Los Angeles, CA | 5:00)
A young man, alone in his kitchen, recalls his father’s involvement with the Soviet space program, and crafts a clever visual metaphor relating his domestic loneliness to the flow of world history.

Domingo (Sunday) (Nacho Vigalondo | Madrid | 3:30)
In this era of compulsive video recording, there's a tremendous desire to save everything. But sometimes domestic life interferes with, well, interstellar life.

The Haunting of Matt Lemche (Peter Stevens | Ontario | 28:54)
Matt Lemche is a young Canadian actor who has appeared with John C. Reilly and Jennifer Connelly in Dark Water, a horror film about a woman with a ghost in her apartment. But as Matt’s long-time friends reveal in this film, the real Matt Lemche’s apartment also has some unexplained phenomena,

Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane
(David Zellner & Nathan Zellner | Austin, TX | 6:00)
While on their way to a mariachi recital, a devastating car crash forces a mother and her two sons to confront the truth about their past. Wait for it . . . it really is a home movie.

A Map With Gaps (Alice Nelson | Scotland | 26:00)
Using a combination of archive audio recordings, still photographs, drama reconstruction, and animation, this surreal and comic tale recounts the director’s father’s journey through Soviet Russia in the early 1970’s in a van he built and named Supervan.

I Remember Lebanon (Zeina A.H. | Beirut & London | 6:00)
“ These are the last images I have of Beirut – pictures I took from the airport, as I waited to board the flight, one week before the first bombs fell, on this runway. The mountains, so peaceful then, now look over a city in ruins.” – Zeina A. H

Snap Shots from Reality (Johanna St. Michaels | Sweden | 9:00)
“ This film is about Jackie’s battle with cancer. We met through a mutual friend. She had been diagnosed two weeks earlier with uterine cancer and wanted her body documented before she had any treatment. I wanted to photograph Jackie to show how fragile life is and how quickly everything can change.” – J. St. Michaels.

Music: La Laque

Brooklyn locals La Laque love film noir, fashion, Godard, mod-rock and all things Francophilic. They even sing in French. But though La laque are singularly Gallic in attitude, their beautiful, delicate, airy ballads would likely break your heart in in any language. Let's just hope that they can keep their pearls, heels, white gloves and vintage dresses looking fancy along the grungy shore of the Gowanus Canal.

You can hear their lovely and enchanting songs on MySpace