I was lucky enough to attend the Flaherty Seminar this year and was thrilled to be introduced to so much great work and so many wonderful filmmakers so it’s good to see that they are launching a monthly screening series in NYC so that more people can access the work that they curate (this year’s curator was Chi-hui Yang, director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival). I was a particular fan of Oliver Hussein’s short films so I urge all of you to go along to the first in the series at the Anthology Film Archives on Monday, October 13th to watch his films and meet the funny and talented guy behind them. The theme of the Flahery this year was The Age of Migration and German-Indian Canadian resident Hussein’s surreal, border-crossing sensibility embraced this perfectly.

Films and videos to be screened include:

·    Q (2002, 15 min.) – A fantasy of globalization set in a multicultural consumer space that fulfills its shoppers’ and viewers’ every desire and need. Consumption of art, merchandise, and entertainment is flattened and one and the same–a fluid, seamless experiential encounter.

·    Squiggle (2005, 21 min.) – A personal exploration of a young man’s desire to understand himself as an artist as he returns to India, his homeland. While a group of Indian workers build a mud-architecture performance stage by hand, he muses on the art world and ideas of ritual, tradition, and place.

·    Swivel (2003-05, 15 min.) – An experimental work where the camera continuously swivels around to create a 360° panoramic portrait of new Shanghai, passing from the suburbs into the city and back.

·    Shrivel (2005, 8 min.) – A surrealist fantasy of a hyper- globalized Indonesian suburb where American consumer culture and lifestyle have taken over. Amidst tract homes, bad hair, and incessant cell phone calls, a hysteric, soap-operatic mystery unfolds.

·    Green Dolphin (2008, 9 min.) – Finding its narrative inspiration in the 1947 Lana Turner film Green Dolphin Street, this hybrid films follows a Filipino Canadian woman as she recounts her complicated romantic affairs (which may or may not be imagined), while a spatial continuum is opened between her suburban Canadian setting and the bustling streets of Jakarta.

·    Mount Shasta (2008, 8 min.) – A 16-mm film of a puppet play created by Husain and based on incidents during a road trip through Oregon. Music by Canadian independent recording artist Mantler (a.k.a. Chris A. Cummings).

Get tickets here.

Future fall screenings will feature the hilarious Alison Kobayashi (Canada), and Lee Wang (USA) and will include post-screening discussions with the filmmakers

If not, get thy butt to the cinema tout suite. There’s so much good indie fare to enjoy and support at the moment: Azazel Jacob’s Momma’s Man is playing at Angelika. I haven’t seen it yet but everyone I know who has raves about it – in the meantime let Manohla Dargis convince you.

Tia Lessin’s and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water is currently playing at IFC Center. This doc has been getting fantastic reviews but in case you need further convincing let’s reel out Dargis again: “one of the best American documentaries in recent memory.”

And finally Patrick Creadon’s I.O.U.S.A. is playing at the Quad and Regal E-Walk Stadium 13. Debt ain’t just a theory to me so I’m interested to see this doc.

Rooftop Films are a good reason to stay in hot, sticky NYC during the Summer months. They curate some incredible film programs (both shorts and features), coupled with great music and beautiful outdoor locations. They are also developing grant programs to help the independent film community that they are part of. Their latest grant is an Equipment Grant provided through a partnership with Eastern Effects. Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung has been awarded a two-ton lighting and grip package for 30 days to be used on his next film Lucky Life. You can see his critically-acclaimed debut feature, Munyurangabo, at The Old American Can Factory on Saturday. Congrats to all involved!

Still from Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyrangabo, playing at Rooftop Films this Saturday.

Full Battle Rattle opens at Film Forum today and we have an interview with the directors Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber up on Shooting People. Read the interview and see the film. It’s surreal and powerful – the US military can’t control a simulation so how can they control a war?

I went to see Captured (Ben Solomon, Dan Levin and Jenner Furst) at Rooftop Films last night – on the Open Road Rooftop in the Lower East Side. It was an incredible night – feeling so plugged into the neighborhood, looking out over the ever changing skyline, and watching a film about a man, Clayton Patterson, who has tirelessly documented the LES for 30 years. Clayton’s photographs and videos tell a fascinating story of a neighborhood in constant flux – from the drugs and graffiti, the homeless and the squatters, the Puerto Ricans and old-time Jews, to the drag queens at the Pyramid Club and the hardcore boys who watched over them, and on to the encroaching gentrification of the late 80s and 90s. The film peaks in 1988 with the Tompkins Square Riots when the fight against gentrification was fought in the streets in pitch battles with police. The deal is sealed with the closing of CBGBs, celebrated and mourned with a final Bad Brains show, Clayton snapping away in the front row as he is moshed from all sides. Clayton was always there, constantly getting arrested and beaten up, working in tandem with his quietly powerful wife, losing teeth to tell the story of the neighborhood he loved and the people who lived there.

Still from Clayton’s footage of the 1988 Tompkins Square Riots.

The roof of the Open Road Rooftop has some amazing graffiti murals and sitting up there with Clayton in his signature embroidered cap, snapping photos of the audience (gentrifiers though we may be!), felt electric. A.R.E. Weapons provided much of the music for the film and they played a great set before it started, including my cheesy favorite Don’t Be Scared. If you live in NYC, or any city for that matter, and you care about what happens to communities and local histories you should see this film (and if you’re one of those people who keep moving into the horrible new chrome and glass buildings in my neighborhood you should definitely see this film!)

A.R.E. Weapons performing before the Rooftop Films screening of Captured with some of Clayton’s photographs projected behind them.

Summer is here which means that Rooftop Films are back on Friday, June 6th with This Is What We Mean By Short Films. This is very good news indeed for fans of film, lovers of New York City, and appreciators of fine rooftops.  I am always happy to sit outside under the stars and watch beautifully curated shorts and features so I was pleased as punch to get involved with the Rooftop Films Panorama which is happening next week, June 12-14. On Saturday, June 14th Rooftop Films, Shooting People and IndiePix will be presenting two panels before the Industriance shorts program at The Old American Can Factory: Cinema and Social Justice and The Art of the Short Film. Panelists include Ryan Harrington (Gucci Tribeca Fund), Simon Kilmurry (P.O.V.), Esther Robinson (Director, A Walk Into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story), Katy Chevigny (Arts Engine and Director, Election Day) Benh Zeitlin (Filmmaker, Glory at Sea), Duana Butler (Filmmaker, Curator of ReelNY) and Signe Baumane (animator).

It’s going to be an amazing evening of panels, music and films -  tickets are only $6 online so please come out to play.

Not exactly hot off the press this, but I went to see Jonathan Demme’s The Agronomist at Stranger Than Fiction last Tuesday and the Q&A was fantastic. Jean Dominique’s widow, Michèle Montas, got a highly deserved standing ovation. Danny Glover walked in and joined the group on stage and Montas proceeded to have everyone in tears talking about how the team at Radio Haiti-Inter convinced her to keep the station running for three years after Dominique’s death (until an assassination attempt, which resulted in the death of her bodyguard, forced her to leave Haiti in 2003). The bravery and determination of Dominque and Montas in their fight for democracy and freedom of the press in Haiti comes across so powerfully in the film and it was a real privilege to hear Montas speak.

Meira Blaustein (representing screening co-presenter: Woodstock Film Festival), Executive Producer Daniel Wolff, Producer Peter Saraf, Director Jonathan Demme, the incredible Michèle Montas, and Danny Glover.

Albert Maysles’ Psychiatry in Russia and the little seen Showman are screening at the last of this season’s Stranger Than Fiction tomorrow night. Al will be there for the Q&A – should be a treat.

Sandi DuBowski, the producer of A Jihad for Love and Director of Trembling Before G-d, is one of those people who knows a lot of people. And he knows a lot of people because he is awesome – generous and inspiring – so I am jumping in and spreading the word about the film. I haven’t seen it yet but I have been following its progress for a long time and will definitely be going to support the opening weekend. Directed by Parvez Sharma, and filmed over 5 years in 12 countries and 9 languages, A Jihad for Love investigates the stories of gay and lesbian Muslims all over the world.

A strong outreach element includes the following events at the IFC Center:

Fri, May 23rd, 7 pm – Dialogue with Progresive Muslims Meet Up Group
Satur, May 24th – Human Rights Day
Tues, May 27th, 7 pm – Interfaith dialogue
Wednes, May 28th, 7 pm – Forum on HIV/AIDS and Islam
Thurs, May 29th, 7 pm – Forum on South Asian/Diaspora/Gender/Immigration issues

Here’s the trailer:

I wrote about King Corn last year when it had its theatrical release. If you missed it back then, now is your chance to catch it on TV. The film is about two recent college graduates, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who decide to move to rural Iowa to plant an acre of corn and follow it through the food production chain all the way to the dinner plate. Along the way they learn some rather nasty facts about the way our food is produced. The bottom line: Americans eat too much corn and the cost of food in this country does not reflect the true cost of producing it. The industrial process of food production is literally “fast food” and it is doing terrible things to our health and to the wider eco-system.

I have been getting rather obsessed with Michael Pollan’s writing because of King Corn and thinking about my food perhaps more than I’d like to! I just read Pollan’s excellent Power Steer article in The New Kings of Nonfiction (a fantastic book by the way, edited by This American Life’s Ira Glass).

Check out local listings for King Corn on the Independent Lens website. Dinner will never be the same again!

I have been so caught up with work that I have completely failed to go to any of the screenings at the MoMA Documentary Fortnight. This weekend you can see some of the films that Joan Churchill has been involved with. Churchill is probably best known for her work with Nick Broomfield but she has an impressive body of work behind her as a cinematographer for other noteworthy directors, from Peter Watkins’ extraordinary Punishment Park to Gimme Shelter and the Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. MoMA is screening Punishment Park along with films Churchill collaborated with Broomfield on: Juvenile Liaison, Soldier Girls and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

Unfortunately I’m going miss them all because (fortunately) I’ll be at True/False this weekend. Whoo  hoo! (I can’t believe WaMu co-opted that expression by the way. Bastards!)

Punishment Park, Dir Peter Watkins, 1971