Eighteen years ago, there were very few outlets for independent film in New York City. This was before there were film festivals in every city around the world, and before you could find and stream any film in a matter of seconds over your computer with a strong Internet connection. For filmmakers working with a small budget outside the traditional channels of distribution and promotion, opportunities to screen a film and have it reach an audience were limited — some filmmakers found their work had no chance to be seen at all.
Rooftop Films was created to fill that void. Put together in 1997 by Mark Elijah Rosenberg, who was looking to find interesting ways to show films and bring people together. He and a few friends began by screening films on the roof of their apartment, later moving to the roof of the lofts on McKibbin Street in Brooklyn.
“We started out as a much smaller organization, all volunteer-run 18 years ago when we were just getting out of college,” said Dan Nuxoll, the program director for Rooftop, in a recent phone conversation. “When I first started doing it, the core idea was pretty simple: We wanted to show films that deserved an audience and wouldn’t have gotten that audience otherwise.”
Nuxoll joined in its second year, when the screenings moved to Bushwick, and over his time with Rooftop, as the group has grown considerably and the series has gone from a few scattered screenings to a weekly program of events that runs all summer long, things have changed — but only slightly. The focus is still on independent filmmakers, but the program is more expansive and, for the organizers, more time-consuming. According to Nuxoll, the group begins working on the series in earnest not long after the previous one ends, attending film festivals, reaching out to filmmakers, and watching countless films.
“But there are plenty of films that show up on our doorstep,” Nuxoll told me, noting that the group received over 3,000 blind submissions this year, a combination of short and feature films. One of those, Adam Newport-Berra’s “Thanksgiving,” will make its world premiere at the series on July 3.
Other films have been nurtured by Rooftop since the beginning. The series opens on May 17 with Gillian Robespierre’s abortion comedy, “Obvious Child,” starring Jenny Slate, which premiered at Sundance and played at New Directors/New Films earlier this year. “I had seen a rough cut of before it was at Sundance, and we had given a grant to them previously through the Rooftop Filmmakers Fund, more than two years ago, well before it was even into production,” Nuxoll said. “We were excited about it and once we saw it and saw how successfully it had come together we were happy to highlight it.”
What Rooftop highlights every year ranges far and wide. Some of the films that will screen this summer include Jim Mickle’s throwback revenge-thriller “Cold in July,” starring Michael C. Hall; a documentary about Brit-Pop band Pulp; Michael Winterbottom’s “A Trip to Italy”; and “The Case of the Three Sided Dream,” a film about blind jazz legend Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Part of the appeal of Rooftop, and part of the challenge for the programmers, is where to screen each film. “That definitely influences our programming,” Nuxoll said. “We’re thinking about what’s going to work where, and what’s going to be augmented by the location. It’s a bit more complicated than just picking the films.”
This year, they are particularly excited about a screening of Sara Dosa’s “The Last Season,” about mushroom hunters in the Pacific Northwest, on the rooftop farm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “It was a film we knew about for a long time, and as soon we had the venue we immediately thought the film would be fantastic in that location,” Nuxoll said.
“Sometimes we just love a film so much we go out and try to find the perfect venue to show it at,” Nuxoll added, “whether it’s a venue we’ve worked with previously or one we’ve never shown at before.” Right now, he is attempting to set up a screening of Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “R100,” about an ordinary man who joins a mysterious sex group, at a BDSM club, a first for Rooftop. “We’re always trying to be as creative as possible with it,” Nuxoll said, laughing.
As the program and audiences continue to grow in size, and venues become more audacious, the people behind Rooftop are thankfully humble about their success. For them, even though the environment around has changed, their mission has remained solidly in place. “The original idea of doing films on a roof was that it seemed more fun than showing it in a movie theater,” Nuxoll said, “and that’s still the case I think. It’s still a way to bring people out. It’s about enjoying this work together.”
