PSR_61

36 | park slope Reader
performances before all of our screenings, Q and A’s with filmmakers
after the screenings, and after parties following most of our
ticketed events.
The origins of RTF, much like those of the Moth, are the stuff of legend;
the festival almost seems to have begun by happy accident.
Can you describe how RTF came to be?
Yeah, it is true that we definitely did not originally intend to build
an entire film organization that would still be around 20 years
later. The very first screening was pretty much organized as a
one-man-operation by Mark Elijah Rosenberg. He and I went to
Vassar together and it was
his idea to show movies
on rooftops. Back then
he mostly just wanted
to show some new short
films by himself and
some filmmakers he admired,
but being just 21
years old and fresh out
of college, there wasn’t
any money to rent a theater.
He did, however,
have access to a small
rooftop above his apartment
building in the East
Village, so he lugged a
16mm projector up to
the roof and hooked it
up to his brother’s punk
band’s PA system and invited
anyone he could to
come drink some beers
and watch some movies.
The evening turned out great and the next year he wanted to
do it again, but his landlord definitely wasn’t going to let him use
that roof again. But along with some friends from high school, I
had renovated a gigantic 10,000 square foot warehouse space in
the as-yet ungentrified neighborhood of Bushwick in what would
eventually come to be known as the McKibbin St. Lofts. We had
a huge indoor space and an even bigger rooftop, so we built a
screen on the roof and started doing shows there. That’s where
we were based for the next five years until I moved out of that
building.
We kept expanding our activities, going from one to four to
eight to sixteen screenings a year, and at that point it had become
too much work to remain a hobby. We incorporated as a
non-profit, moved our offices into the Old American Can Factory
in Gowanus, and continued to expand. So, it wasn’t by any means
an overnight success, but we certainly have become a much more
substantial organization than we had originally intended to be.
At what point over the last 20 years of the program did you realize
that the festival had become something important for NY moviegoers?
Hmm. I am not sure that there was any single moment in time. But
there were certainly some moments along the way. Eventually our
shows started to become very, very large, and that certainly made
an impression on us. I remember in 2008 we presented the premiere
of this fantastic documentary about the LES photographer
Clayton Patterson and more than 1,100 people showed up, including
Ed Koch (despite the fact that he was not favorably portrayed
in the film). That certainly made an impression.
And there were many other highlights: screening Trouble the
Water in Harlem Meer, giving a grant to help get Beasts of the
Southern Wild made, and just generally seeing so many of the
young NYC filmmakers that we had championed succeed, people
like Lena Dunham, Benh Zeitlin, and Casey Neistat. With each new
talent taking the step to the next level we are reminded that organizations
like our own play an important role in the creative life
of the city.
What do you think attracts movie fans to the festival?
Well, it’s a number of things. I think, perhaps most importantly, we
prioritize the films and the audience experience and don’t get distracted
by the other elements that some other festivals are distracted
by. We are always focused on creating events that are fun, interesting,
engaging, interactive, and unique, and we try to create as many
incentives as possible for audience members to come out to our
shows.
Of course
It will always be exciting to us to
present work by filmmakers that no
one has yet heard of. It’s our job to
make sure that people hear about
them in the future. I hope that never
changes.
we work
very, very
hard on
our film
programming—
we watch
m o r e
t h a n
3 , 5 0 0
films every
year and we only show 3% of them, so the films we are presenting
are definitely very thoroughly vetted. But, in addition to that,
we have a fantastic music programmer who finds great emerging
artists to perform before the films. We have free drinks after most
of our screenings. And the venues are beautiful, interesting places
that would be fun places to hang out at even if nothing was going
on. I think our film curation is excellent, but often people show up
not knowing much about what they are going to see that night,
and that’s great. We want to draw people in to discover something
new and unexpected.
Can you describe the process of selecting movies for the program?
What’s your main priority when putting together the
schedule for each season?
Rooftop has a pretty big team of people who watch the films. We
receive thousands of blind submissions each year and also attend
festivals like Sundance, IDFA, SXSW, and Toronto to track down
others. We also request a lot of films from filmmakers and producers
that we have heard good things about. We have a screening
committee of about thirty paid people and have three full-time
employees who also work on programming (including myself). We
sift through all those movies and choose the films we think will
work best for us.
The first most important criteria are that the films are new, independent,
or foreign, and that we think they are great. We are
particularly interested in films that are innovative and come from a
fresh perspective. Luckily, we have a young and adventurous audience
that is excited when we take chances, so we don’t have many
creative restrictions on our programming. Our audience is willing
to come out for even experimental films by unknown filmmakers
because they trust us—which makes our jobs a lot easier.
But the one thing that differentiates us quite a bit from other
festivals is that we are more event-based, so we do take things into
account that other festivals might not. For instance, if there is a