Rooftop Films: Up With Me (Event Over)

Fri., August 8, 2008

Up With Me
Love and loyalty are put to the test when a Harlem teenager is offered a prep school scholarship upstate.

Venue: on the roof of El Museo Del Barrio
Address: 1230 Fifth Avenue @ 104th Street (East Harlem)
Directions: 6 to 103rd St. or 2/3 to 110th St.
Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location
8:00PM: Doors open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by Balun
9:00PM: Films

11:00PM: After Party with free Radeberger Pilsner
Presented in partnership with: IFC.com, New York magazine, and El Museo del Barrio

Up With Me (Greg Takoudes | New York, NY | 1:16:00)

“In school, they taught us about great civilizations. But one day, they’ll count Harlem as one of them, and they’ll count us. No billionaire wants so much as us. . . . No one ever loved like I love Francisco. There were no better friends than ours.” But when Francisco, a teenager from Harlem, is admitted to an upstate boarding school on scholarship, he is torn between his life at home—his loyal girlfriend and his jealous best friend—and the new environment.

In tough and disadvantaged neighborhoods, people always face a dilemma choosing between local pride and worldly desire, between staying loyal and seeking a better life. How do you improve yourself (or even define “improvement”) in ways that don’t alienate your friends, your loved ones, your community?

Francisco wants the education, but doesn’t want to change. In a brilliant act of narrative restraint, the filmmakers barely show Francisco at the new school for most of the movie, leaving the audience wondering (like his friends) what the upstate academy is actually like for him. His tender scenes with Erika subtly highlight the way he’s not quite sure what to do with his newly acquired knowledge, embarrassed to embarrass her, even though she is clearly a poetically insightful and inquisitive person.

But as Francisco tries to leave his troubles in Harlem behind, his best friend Brandon puts his own life in danger—partly to test his own ability to hustle, and partly as a loyalty test to Francisco. Brandon is desperately needy, but also has a nihilist pragmatism about him that is both scary and sad. While Francisco tries to better himself through education, and seems to consider his friend’s cavalier thug life as childish, Brandon defends his lifestyle with a mix of defiance and defeatism: “What else are we gonna do? This is my life.”

This gritty, charming and dynamic narrative feature was created as a collaboration between director Greg Takoudes and at-risk youth at the East Harlem Tutorial Program. The screenplay is based on months-long writing workshops with the teenagers, who then starred in the movie, and—when they weren't acting in scenes—helped crew the set. “I wanted to turn these teens into filmmakers,” Takoudes said in IndieWire, “to teach them film skills, and make our movie in a way that the creative responsibility for the film rested as much with the teens, as with me. I thought that if they understood this responsibility, that they would rise to the occasion. And they did.” The film was shot in the streets where they hang out and in the apartments where they live—and now Rooftop Films and El Museo del Barrio invite you to see it in that same neighborhood.

At Rooftop Films, we don’t screen in theaters—we screen in communities. You’re not going into a dark, isolated room to watch a movie, but coming out into the world, experiencing the film in a shared, communal environment, much the way these teenagers opened up their own lives to share with the world. With the filmmakers, cast and crew in attendance, this screening of Up With Me promises to be a lively and memorable experience.