Saturday, July 9th, 2005
8:30 - Live music by Ruben Radding (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.
Nick Peterson & the Clouds
Nick Peterson is a hot young auteur from Portland, Oregon, and on this night at Rooftop Films we'll give the East Coast premiere to a handful of his films. Peterson's short movies about love, loneliness, and the unusual community of the Pacific Northwest have a singular cinematic vision, displaying a stunning range of black comedy, drama, and experimentation. Gus Van Sant said: "I would like to say that [Nick Peterson] is one of the best young filmmakers I have come across in a long time. His unity of vision is rare and gives me hope for the next generation of American filmmakers."
Other films include similar beautiful oddities.
THE FILMS:
31st Northwest Film and Video Festival Trailer (Nick Peterson / Portland, OR / 1:00)
A comic little ode to a youthful love of cinema. This film is not so much a trailer for one film festival as it is a tribute to film adoration.
Split Pea Soup (Nick Peterson / Portland, OR / 4:00)
Three complete strangers go about their lives, sometimes passing each other anonymously. All the while, unspoken desires of companionship, the fear of rejection and a yearning to be alone are subtly played out within the passive city.
Webern Tests (Nick Peterson / Portland, OR / 5:00)
In an experiment of space and tone, the askew settings to many of Peterson's films are juxtaposed with the angular music of Anton Webern. In the context of all Peterson's work, one can see how his vision of his own landscape permeates his films.
Four Star Day (Chris Keating and Grady Owens / Providence, RI / 26:48)
This short film strings together everyday encounters with platitudes of communication into an aching soliloquy on one man's isolation and loneliness. Courtesy of Chaise 2 DVD
Me (JJ Villard / Los Angeles, CA / 5:00)
"There are breaking points," and our favorite dark animator, JJ Villard, discusses his, for better and worse, in gritty, coffee-stained images.
Ratatat "Cherry" (e*rock / Portland, OR / 5:40)
Let go. Don«t try to understand, don«t try to think. Just feel. An experimental music video that we think sums up the melancholy mood of these cloudy day films.
Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague (Nick Peterson / Portland, OR / 12:00)
Three friends participate in an iconoclastic plan to chide death.
Take My Life Please or A List of Things To Do Today in One Act (Kelly Oliver & Keary Rosen / Union, NJ / 5:00)
In stark contrast to Peterson«s quiet meditations on small desperate lives, but with a similar feeling, Oliver«s startling sideways-leaping video matches and mish-mashes Rosen«s ranting alarm. "I'm just starting to communicate. You're my only audience and I'm not sure I like you."
Contingent (Nick Peterson / Portland, OR / 26:00)
A masterly, elliptical romantic drama about the love life of a young, disaffected, mysteriously sadistic young woman.
THE MUSIC: Reuben Radding is an improvising bassist who revels in variety, having lent his creativity to all genres, from avant garde to swing, folk, pop, klezmer, chamber music, and all points between. According to Peter Monahan of Earshot Jazz, Radding "veer[s] with abandon between conventional pizzicato work and a post-free liberty-taking aided by bow, sticks, and hands. A muscly, mesomorph figure, Radding bullies, slaps, and worries his bass like a half-bothered, fully curious black bear mauling a backpacker."
