Some good, or at least interesting, films surfaced at Tribeca this year—I’ll get to a few a couple of paragraphs down, and I wrote about others here last week—almost in spite of the umbrella organization itself. You can’t help but wonder: What is the template for this festival, which has been struggling to find its identity since its inception? Toronto, Sundance, Cannes, Berlin? San Francisco, Denver? Answer: It’s not cast from a festival mold at all, in spite of the invaluable input of former artistic director Peter Scarlet and David Kwok, as far as I can tell the only current […]
by Howard Feinstein on Apr 26, 2010MSNBC’s nightly programs are manna, a much-needed counterbalance to the agitprop spewing from Fox News. Reading Stephen Holden’s preview of the Tribeca Film Festival in the April 16th edition of the Times, I wondered if we need more than ever an alternative print organ covering culture, in New York anyway, with the clout of the Times. Holden parrots Tribeca’s moldy marketing theme, then jumps to a questionable conclusion. “Because the festival…was born in the ashes of the World Trade Center as a community development project to revive the devastated economy of Lower Manhattan, you might say My Trip to Al-Qaeda is woven into […]
by Howard Feinstein on Apr 19, 2010The Tribeca Film Festival has announced that Freaknomics will serve as the closing gala of the festival on April 30. Freaknomics is a documentary that was based on the bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Exposes the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It melds pop culture with economics, and examines economics in such diverse subject matter as legalized abotion, drug dealing, education, and naming children. The film is directed by an array of critically acclaimed documentary filmmakers: Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady and Heidi […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Mar 30, 2010The Tribeca Film Festival announced today its line-up of short films. The Festival has selected 47, including Joachim Back’s 2010 Academy Award-winning film for Best Live Action Short, The New Tenants. They will be presented in six thematic programs with 21 world premieres, a record number for the festival. Selections include shorts directed by Ken Jacobs, Max Hoffman, James Cromwell, Joshua Bell, and returning TFF directors include Jacobs, Domenica Scorsese, Rodney Evans, Mark Street, Jean-Gabriel Periot, Tal Rosner, Bill Morrison, Thomas Hefferon and Sara Zandieh. Learn more at tribecafilm.com/festival. Full list of titles are below. HARD CORE Bedford Park Boulevard, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 18, 2010The 2010 Tribeca Film Festival today announced its remaining out-of-competition feature film selections in the Encounters, Discovery, Cinemania and Spotlight sections. The Festival will run April 21 to May 2. The Encounters section, comprised of 14 films, include selections include new works by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Alex Gibney and Chuck Workman, Academy Award nominee Dana Adam Shapiro, and featuring actors like Ellen Barkin, Liev Schreiber, Melissa Leo, Rashida Jones, Tilda Swinton, and many more. The Discovery section include documentaries showcasing everything from the North Pole and Congressional redistricting to a comedy tour of the Middle East. Its narrative films feature […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 15, 2010Announced earlier today, the 9th annual Tribeca Film Festival announced their Competition roster and films in their Showcase category for this year’s fest, which takes place April 21 – May 2 in New York City. Some of the highlights include Alex Gibney‘s work-in-progress screening of his doc on Eliot Spitzer and (get this) Vincent Gallo lending his voice in the animated film, Metropia. Full list of films are below. World Narrative Feature Competition “Buried Land,” directed by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes and Steven Eastwood, written by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, Steven Eastwood, and Dzenan Medanovic. (USA, UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina) – World […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 10, 2010Every Thursday I pen an Editor’s Note that goes out to subscribers of our email newsletter (you can subscribe for free here) that is usually not also posted on the blog. I’m reposting today’s newsletter below because some kind of software glitch stripped out most of the punctuation from the copy as well as certain key words. Apologies if you received it and it was less than elegant. Here it is again: The big news in the independent world this week was Tribeca Enterprise’s announcement that it would launch a “virtual film festival” alongside this Spring’s Tribeca Film Festival event. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2010Traditionally known for unveiling blockbusters on opening night, the Tribeca Film Festival will continue that tradition in 2010 when it screens the World Premiere of DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek Forever After. The final chapter in the successful Shrek franchise, the film will also be shown in 3-D. Shrek Forever After will be released nationally on May 21. The slate of films at this year’s festival, running April 21 – May 2, will be announced later this month. Tickets for the Tribeca Film Festival are available at www.tribecafilmfestival.com/festival.
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 2, 2010OCTAVIO GÓMEZ IN STEVE BARRON’S CHOKING MAN. COURTESY INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT. Considering Steve Barron’s career, you can’t help wondering why he isn’t better known. Having grown up around films (because his mother, Zelda Barron, was a script supervisor, producer and director), Dublin-born Barron progressed from a clapper loader on movies like A Bridge Too Far and Ridley Scott’s debut The Duellists (both 1977) to one of the most influential pop promo directors of the 1980s. He was responsible for the videos for Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing and a-ha’s Take On Me. After making the cult […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 9, 2007For those of you who are members of Filmmaker‘s MySpace page, click over to your in-boxes. I’ve just posted a bulletin with invites to a free MySpace Tribeca secret screening of two films. One I’ve seen and it’s really great, and the other is a doc on a subject that can’t go wrong.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2006