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Screening Journal - Rooftop Screens "Un-American" Films
Posted on July 06, 2004
by MediaRights intern Jessica Pascoe
I was among the approximately two hundred people who gathered this Fourth of July at the River Project on Pier 26 in lower Manhattan to watch Rooftop Films' curated series of shorts entitled, "Un-American Films." Before the screening, live music was provided by activist punk band Marathon and melodic Indian music was piped through the speakers. Both helped underscore the evening's intentions of presenting perspectives of the other to help define American identity.
The Sixth Section and other films played in front of an audience of over 200.
Through this foreign optic, the films presented included expressions of French solidarity, fictive vision tests highlighting racial bias, personal experiences in Gaza, community struggles against Texaco oil, destruction of sacred Hopi sites in Arizona and even a science fiction look at American imperialism. Collectively, the films helped me not only examine what it is to be an American in 2004, but also to connect American policies with their unjust consequences.
The screening included three films from the third and fourth Media That Matters Film Festivals: Vision Test, Esmeraldas: Petroleum and Poverty, and The Sixth Section.
Although the event was entitled "Un-American Films," the evening was patriotic in the sense that it devoted itself to examinations of past actions, present trends and future predications. I left the evening confident not only in the medium of film as a catalyst for change, but also confident that Americans will help humanize America.