Letters From the Other Side at Rooftop Films July 8, 2006

Letters From the Other Side
A feature-length by Heather Courtney

DISCOUNTS FOR THIS SHOW: $5 for members of the Architecture League (use discount code ARCHI1) and the Park Slope Food Coop (use discount code COOP1) when buying tickets online. You must present your valid membership card at the door to gain admittance at this price.

Saturday July 8, 2006
8:30 - Live Music by Jose Moura Modern Bossa Band (click for details)
9:00 - Showtime
TRT: 1:14:19

On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street @ 3rd Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.

SPECIAL NOTE: Capacity on the rooftop is limited to 200 people. In the event we sell out the roof in advance, we will be accepting walk-up patrons for our lovely courtyard. The best way to guarantee yourself a spot on the roof is to buy a ticket in advance.

Letters From the Other Side
Every year at Rooftop Films we have a show of "Home Movies"—films made by individuals using the unique power of motion pictures to capture and investigate their own lives. At Rooftop, we're interested in seeing how people see themselves, in a raw unmediated form—confessing to a camera, sending a video letter to lost loved one. We want to see how the individual story reflects the larger issue. There have been a slew of recent documentaries about Mexican immigration to the U.S., but Letters from the Other Side is the most deeply personal, the most formally innovative, and the most plainly touching.

Letters from the Other Side interweaves video letters carried across the U.S./Mexico border with the intimate stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico. By focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in our national debate, Letters paints a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.

"Courtney's question, 'what about the survivors?' is answered with overwhelming sadness. 'Nobody leaves because they want to,' says one woman, and all the political noise about predatory immigrants and porous borders falls away like scales."
—John Anderson, Variety

The feature will be preceded by one short:

Uten Tittel (Untitled) (Anja Breien | Oslo, Norway | 14:00)
A mysterious and ominous black plague is moving into the snowy north in this horrifyingly humane film, gorgeously photographed in a series of still images.

THE MUSIC:
The Jose Moura Modern Bossa Band plays the classic songs of bossa nova and Brazilian pop like no other group. Eliminating the lead guitar and the keyboard, the band shifts the musicís airy, multilayered harmonies down to the earthier, more minimal bass. Meanwhile, the flute, gentle percussion and the viola da gamba retain the ease and lightness the music is famous for. The result is a fresh, inventive take on a popular sound.

Arranger and bassist Jose Moura has played with many well-known, respected artists, such as the composers Arthur Kampela, Dexter Myers, Annie Keating, Derby, Simaku and Dante, and the bands Cao Sem Dono and Banda Brasil. In 1998 he received the prestigious Virtuose Award from the Ministry of Culture of Brazil.

Official Website: http://www.rooftopfilms.com