Dirty Birds Download a Press Release soon or buy TICKETS Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 8:30 - Live music by The Mountain Goats (details below) 9:00 - The Films On the roof of The Old American Can Factory 232 Third Street, Gowanus/Park Slope, Brooklyn. Dress warmly (it's cooler on the roof than in the streets). In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location. Dirty Birds THE FILMS: The Birdpeople (Michael Gitlin / Brooklyn, NY / 1:01:00) "A study of ornithologists in which the observers merge indissolubly with their subjects. The film, shot on 16mm with mostly non-sync sound, divorces image from audio, creating a flurry of testimonials and readings that place it far above most talking-head docs. Abetted by Gitlin«s ultra-intimate eye, The Birdpeople goes beyond the usual issues of human-bird interaction (tagging, nets, pouches, hunting, taxidermy) into profitably weird turf, such as the potent effect one warbler species had on the McCarthy hearings." --Edward Crouse, Village Voice Frog (Chris Conforti / New York, NY / 3:54) A frantic 4 minutes in the life of one very unfortunate frog on the run. Dirty Work (David Sampliner & Tim Nackashi / Brooklyn, NY / 55:00) www.dirtyworkdoc.com Dirty Work follows three men who deal with our unpleasant business -- Darrell, a septic tank pumper; Russ, a bull semen collector; and Bernard, an embalmer. They take us into worlds that are right under our noses but we never see, providing services most of us depend on but prefer not to do ourselves. Darrell traces cultural trends from what he finds in septic tanks. Russ sees his job collecting semen from prize bulls as a way to help save the family farmer. And Bernard, the "restorative artist," offers an irreverent look into how the modern death industry distances us from the dead we're trying to mourn. Above all, Dirty Work is the story of how three men discover their passion in our society's undesirable professions. Russ, Darrell, and Bernard don't just do our dirty work, they feel called to it. After meeting them, you will never look at their work or our world the same way again. THE MUSIC: Singer-songwriter John Darnielle, otherwise known as The Mountain Goats, comes to Rooftop Films to perform a classic solo set. Critics call him "the best lyricist in America," and have called his new album, The Sunset Tree, "simply gorgeous." As in the films, Darnielle's songs are populated by a collection of people with quiet obsessions and outsider jobs.