The Rooftop Films 2008 Summer Series

In the aftermath of the SARS outbreak in Beijing, the filmmaker was immersed with a small group of daring and desperate ex-patriots who banded together at the decadent Neo-Lounge nightclub.

Venue: On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
Address: 232 3rd Street at the corner of 3rd Avenue (Gowanus, Brooklyn)
Directions: F, G to Carroll Street or M, R to Union Street and read here for directions from the train| Map
Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by Artanker Convoy
9:00PM: Films
Tickets: $9 at going.com
Preview: See short films from this and other programs at www.IFC.com
Presented in partnership with: IFC.com, New York magazine, and XØ Projects

PROGRAM NOTES:
Beijing is an ancient city in the midst of a massive transition. Like many cities in China, the population has exploded in recent decades. The coming Olympics has put a strain on the city to redevelop and remake itself in ways that often pit traditional Chinese values and structures against a rapid and ruthless Westernization. Buildings are built and torn down faster than they can be remembered, and communities are constantly being displaced, shattered and reconfigured.

Often considered the cultural capital of China, the city attracts a diverse range of foreigners, there for business, pleasure, self-reinvention and other obscure pursuits. Joanna Vasquez Arong—a native of the Philippines who has also lived in Boston, Paris and London—moved to Beijing in 2002, planning to leave behind her career in finance and economic development to pursue filmmaking. Soon thereafter, the SARS outbreak transformed the city into a ghost town of 17 million people, with stores shuttered, transportation shut down, ad hoc quarantine hospitals overflowing, and the once bustling streets populated only with a small smattering of masked wanderers. In was during this period that Arong discovered Neo-Lounge, a decadent club owned by wildly hip couple from Shanghai, and one of the few places that remained open, serving a cliental of what few die-hard ex-patriots remained in the city.

Over the next three years, Arong was immersed in the shifting community in and around Neo-Lounge. Her intimate camerawork and startling editing propels the characters forward in a pulsing freefall. Her sense of narrative is excellent, and her jarring edits create just the right feeling of dislocation and symbolic inevitability as she captures a deep nihilism within the group. Drunken partying always indicates a certain amount of abandon, a willful amount of self-destruction, an escape. But in the case of the Expat, you can sense a deeper desire for self-erasure. Arong's intricately crafted film is a passionate and intelligent exploration of that pathos.

As the film progresses, two characters come to the foreground. Leonardo GrigliÈ is a mysteriously wealthy middle aged Italian impresario, oddly reminiscent of Boris Yeltsin (including his penchants for vodka and tanks). Leo has a magnificent house stuffed to the gills with art and artifacts, and is constantly entertaining, though he is also constantly complaining that everything is "boring." Nothing could be worse for him than a moment of boredom, and his curious ways of filling the time are consistently hilarious. He often hires Diliana Georgieva, a young aspiring actress/model/singer from Bulgaria, to come perform at his parties.

We follow the two of them as their lives twist and turn, always around the central elements of partying and performing (which both do equally with a great lack of inhibition). Slowly, the desperation and confusion in both becomes clear: that feeling of self-erasure is reified (in fascinatingly opposing ways). With Diliana, we learn of a past she ran from, secrets she's kept, and watch as she works to settle herself down in this new, boyfriend-less, Kung Fu studying, way. Leo, however, tries to clean himself up, but to do so up and leaves China for Moscow, departing still a mystery man.

Beijing will never be the same.

Preceded by the short film:

Construction-Destruction (Klemens Hufnagl & Julia Drack | Austria & China | 10:30)
This gorgeous documentary witnesses that as one part of China builds rapidly, another part of China is torn down just as fast. Part of Rooftop Films and XO Projects’ INDUSTRIANCE Series: films, discussions, installations and more about the changing landscape in industry, architecture, agriculture, labor, and related fields.

Part of Rooftop Films and XO Projects’ INDUSTRIANCE™ Series: films, discussions, installations and more about the changing landscape in industry, architecture, agriculture, labor, and related fields.

Click on the films below to read descriptions, rate them, add them to your calendar, and more.