How to Run a Homegrown Film Event: Rooftop Coming to a Roof Near You?

Marketing itself through non-conventional methods - basically hitting the pavement - was an early principle for Rooftop in growing its reach and audience. “The core of our outreach is still grassroots. We’re in an era where right now, major companies want to do grassroots marketing. When we first started out, we didn’t have money at all for commercials and subways etc., so we had to use grassroots marketing and partnering with different groups. That’s how we always did it out of necessity before, but now people seem to like this, people don’t always trust [traditional] marketing.”

Of note to this year’s lineup, Rooftop received over 3,000 submissions for consideration. Along with premieres of unknown films, Rooftop has, like “No Impact Man,” a dose of features that have made their way through the film circuit, including Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” (Magnolia Pictures). The event will also host the U.S. debut of Fabio Wuytack’s doc “Persona Non Grata,” which took prizes at last year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival earlier this year. The film, which follows the story of the director’s father and his life as a left-wing missionary in Venezuela, received funding from Rooftop.

“We’re reaching out to distributors and programmers who might be interested in Latin cinema… The [series] is one aspect of our organization. Rooftop gives grants, including funds for youth education. For artists and non-profits we make our equipment available.” Rooftop’s longest running grant, called simply enough ‘The Rooftop Filmmakers Grant’ is comprised in part from $1 for each ticket sold to screenings and $1 from filmmaker submissions. Other funding programs include the Chicken and Egg fund, which gives $6 thousand for women filmmakers.

July’s screening of “Persona Non Grata” will be the event’s first in a new partnership the group is forming with the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which will again reinforce Rooftop’s focus on emerging filmmakers. Additionally, the partnership will emphasize international work, with filmmakers traveling with their work to Rooftop.

Other initiatives by Rooftop include an expansion of the model to other cities in the U.S. Rooftop has taken the event for one-off dates in San Francisco and some Midwestern cities, but Rosenberg hopes a grassroot creation of Rooftop can sprout in the Bay Area as well as Austin, TX, L.A., and Philadelphia - economic condition permitting. “Our model is to work with existing people in the arts in those cities,” said Rosenberg. “We want it to be a community supported and community invested program, reflecting local tastes in film and the art scene.”

And coming up next weekend at Rooftop are sneak previews of “Winnebago Man” at Open Road Rooftop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and “New Muslim Cool” on the roof of El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem. [For more information, visit Rooftop’s website.]