Jun 30, 2018 at 7:45 pm
UNDO x ROOFTOP: New York Non-Fiction
This screening is a co-presentation with Rooftop Films and takes place outdoors at the Green-Wood Cemetery. Filmmakers in attendance!
Join Rooftop Films as they bring five innovative nonfiction film programs from around the world to outdoor venues across NYC. UnionDocs members receive 30% off tickets with code UD_MEMBERS, while general patrons may receive 15% off tickets with code UD@ROOFTOP!
In 1886, The New York Times reported that “It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the [Central] Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood.” On this night, among the fathers and mothers resting in Green-Wood, we celebrate New Yorkers, all New Yorkers. From the neighborhood veterans, creepy craigslist roommates, and preachers on the corner, to the weirdos wantonly disrupting traffic, the activists fighting gentrification, and the people who just gentrified your neighborhood, this is a night of stories about you and the other 8.5 million people who live in this city. Whether they are liberated by their creativity or imprisoned by government contractors, the protagonists of these short films are real and they are your neighbors. Come, grab a slice, and hang out with your city.
Program
3,000 Miles (三千哩)
Sean Wang & Breton Vivian, 5 min.
On July 5th, 2016, I moved across the country to live and work in New York City for one year. This is a personal documentary of my year, chronicled by voicemails left by my mother.
Crosswalker
Paul Gale & Dustin Molina, 1 min.
A Garbage Story
Olivier Bernier, 8 min.
Over 30 years in the garbage business, Nick has become a bonafide trash connoisseur.
Brother K and the Uncut Truth
Billy Linker & Ben Carey, 4 min.
A portrait of the world’s most infamous anti-circumcision activist and his controversial protest tactics.
I Lived: Brooklyn - Deborah
Jonathan Nelson & Danielle Andersen, 5 min.
New York City has always been an idiosyncratic mashup of cultures, languages, and people from around the world. And Brooklyn–home to the largest population of New Yorkers–is a place where neighborhoods play out their distinctive identities through their residents, brand new and multi-generational alike. I LIVED: Brooklyn, a new short-form documentary series, is an unrestricted lens into the dynamic life of those neighborhoods as experienced by those who know the streets personally. From a lifelong resident to a first-wave gentrifier, from a fifteen-year-old girl to a man who spent over fifteen years behind bars–I LIVED: Brooklyn rejects stereotypes and refuses to rely on clichés. It has no loaded agenda, but rather a clear goal: beautify life in Brooklyn, build an understanding of the intricacies of identity in the borough’s neighborhoods, and tell human stories that have importance to us all.
Flatbush Misdemeanors
Kevin Iso & Dan Perlman, 15 min.
Longtime friends Dan and Kevin adjust to their evolving surroundings in the unforgiving environment of Flatbush, Brooklyn. A raw comedy of city life. Made on zero budget, the first installment of “Flatbush Misdemeanors” has received critical acclaim, becoming Oscar-qualified after winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Short at the 2018 Florida Film Festival. Critics have called it “funny, smart, inventive and constantly surprising” and “street-level filmmaking at its finest.”
Jonas Mekas: Always Beginning
Michael Sugarman, 9 min.
“To film is a necessity. It’s like eating, sleeping, breathing.” Throughout the seven decades since his arrival in New York from Lithuania, Jonas Mekas has trained his camera on every nuance of daily life in his adoptive home. Embedded with the Fluxus circle in the 1960s and the scene that grew around Warhol’s Factory, Mekas’s film diaries are no less fascinated with a cat stalking an insect than with Salvador Dali making art on a city street, or John and Yoko cooking dumplings.Now 95 and recognized as a major pioneer of American independent cinema, Mekas’s playful, mischievous spirit continues to pour forth a torrent of work. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive review of his art, or to fix him in the context of American film history, this small lyric film is a portrait of Jonas Mekas the poet – of memory, displacement, friendship, loss, and above all, joy.
Kayla in 1A
Travis Wood, 4 min.
On September 6th, 2016, I moved in with Kayla, we had never met prior to that day. This is a film about a peculiar roommate that I never really spoke to.
Libre
Anna Barsan, 12 min.
Nexus purports to help people held in immigration custody secure bail. In exchange for this service, the company’s clients are forced to wear ankle monitors until their debts are paid.
Oh What a Beautiful City (A City Symphony)
Lucy Walker, 5 min.
A day in the life of an outdoor public pool in New York City.
The Road to Magnasanti
John Wilson, 14 min.
In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises, “Magnasanti” exposes the hellish consequences of top-down civic design. In his new documentary, John Wilson explores how New York City is creeping closer and closer to realizing this fictional metropolis.
Slice Thing
David Wanger, 2 min.
Aka 2018: A Cheese Odyssey. An abstracted vision of New York City pizza in the form of frenetic pulsing macro photography.
84 min
