Garden Roll Bounce Parking Lot

New (2022) 4K transfer and 16mm preservation print courtesy of The Flaherty Preservation initiative in conjunction with NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) preservation fund.  Thanks to Bill Brand.

Garden Roll Bounce Parking Lot (16mm, color, sound, 2010, 4:30 minutes)

Pop culture and land-use practices converge in Brooklyn, NY where a Bangladeshi family recalls the found film that formed the overhead lattice support for their urban garden – before it was leveled to make a parking space for the father’s livery car.

Prompted by the filmmaker (and neighbor), a brother and sister recall the year that their garden was woven with 35mm motion picture film. Bits of the film that were left lying in the street after the garden was cut down for the winter were optically printed. On inspection, it turned out that the film supporting the garden was the retro urban teen movie featuring an all-black cast, Roll Bounce (Malcolm D. Lee, 2005) – the plot of which hinges around the closing of the protagonists’ local roller rink, The Gardens.

In addition to their recollections of the found film in the garden, the kids disclose their preoccupations with You Tube, Selena Gomez, Michael Jackson, and Urdu-language children’s songs. The combination of pop-cultural references along with the ‘misused’ found film is revealing of the profound and creative merging of cultural practices that transforms the contemporary experience.