Mark Elijah Rosenberg is the Founder and Artistic Director of Rooftop Films; click here for all of his coverage from this year’s SXSW Festival.
Back from Austin, TX and the SXSW Film and Music festival, more has changed than the weather and the rate of films I’m watching per day (from 4 to 5 a day in Austin to 10 to 12 here in New York City during Rooftop’s main programming season). I had a fantastic festival, and it’s always hard to leave the good times behind. Still, there’s something unpleasantly cathartic about air travel. I didn’t want to leave, but after airport drudgery, I’m glad to be home. Now my hometown, New York, feels like an urban space where here and there someone planted a tree, maybe laid down a park. Meanwhile, Austin feels like scrubland, where sidewalks and houses fight to stay rooted. In NYC, nature feels unnatural. But it feels like home. See you next year, Austin!