On a rooftop in Chinatown, 12/06/09

Rooftop above New Design High, Chinatown (photo courtesy of The Rooftop Films)

The best venue to see underground movies: outdoors.  I climbed up 13 flights of very steep stairs, and arrived slightly out of breath at The Rooftop Films latest screening of short films, entitled “New York Nonfiction.”  The rooftop was bathed in dark and the muted yellow light of streetlamps. I walked past crowded metal chairs, climbed over people lying/sitting on the hard cement, and grabbed floor space near the front.  A massive projector screen created silhouettes of bodies with many entwined arms and legs , like a shadow of a Hindu god.

The offerings last night were stories shot in New York, about New Yorkers.  And so, in this city of immigrants, it was vicariously a screening about different cultures and countries.  Read about them here.

My favorites: Lessons from a Tailor, where the photography stills were breathtaking and the wisdom of the main character, Martin Greenfield, stood out.

Unattached, about Jewish “singles catastrophe” in the Upper West Side was hilarious, as the elders rued the inability of the younger generation to marry at a young age.  The final sequence of a Jewish marriage was poignant, it showed the details without revealing the bigger picture–the groom adjusting a white satin tie, the shadow of the bride entering the marriage hall from behind, while the groom watches far off, and especially, the young woman who waves at the happy dancing couple and leaves, alone, unattached.

Bronx Princess, about 17-year-old Rocky who comes to terms with her adulthood as she tries to navigate between her Ghanian roots and her American ideas of independence.  Her mother stole the show.  It was a simple story that required great craft to hold our emotional interest.  And it did, for when the mother broke down after leaving Rocky in college, so did I.

The after party was passable.

Next Saturday’s offering, New Muslim Cool, about Puerto Rican American rapper Hamza Pérez who has started a new religious community in Pittsburgh’s North Side, sounds promising.