Tribeca Film Festival
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TRIBECA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #2: NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
And like that it was gone. Funny thing about film festivals — no one seems to really miss them when they’re over, although within the provisional community that pops up during such events, no one seems to be able to talk about much else (except what they’d rather be doing). So it was with the 11th Tribeca Film Festival, which came to a close on Sunday. Even at the party for The Fourth Dimension, perhaps the most undeniably hip film in the selection (Vice! Grolsch!), the mood was sort of dutiful. As for the actual film, I, like many, left after the Harmony […]
by Brandon Harris on May 1, 2012 -
FOUR TRIBECA DOCS: FROM ZEN TO MADNESS TO SEXY
At 85, Tony Bennett looks and sounds great. In The Zen of Bennett, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon appear on Netflix, Bennett relies on a single word, repeated over and over throughout the documentary, to describe his life philosophy. That word is “quality.” For the clothes he wears, for the songs he sings, for the people who are his friends, for everything, quality is his guiding principle. Conversely, the elderly singer with the smoothest pipes in the business, disparages cheap songs, crude and outlandish behavior, and anger. “Everything you do should be done with love, […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 30, 2012 -
“UNA NOCHE” TAKES THREE AT TRIBECA AWARDS
The Tribeca Film Festival announced the winners of its world cinema awards for narrative and documentary, and Lucy Mulloy’s Cuba-set drama Una Noche was a recurring presence among the prize winners. Una Noche‘s male leads, Dariel Arrechada and Javier Nuñez Florian, shared the Best Actor prize, the film’s d.p.’s, Trevor Forrest and Shlomo Godder, took Best Cinematography for their gorgeous visuals on the film, and Mulloy herself won Best New Narrative Director. In presenting the latter award, the jury — largely made up of actors, including Camilla Belle, Whoopi Goldberg and Leelee Sobieski — gave the following comments: “Lucy Mulloy’s […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 27, 2012 -
FROM AN ABANDONED FARM TO THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Critic and cultural forager Nick Rombes is making an artistic practice of unexpected connections, chance encounters and disrupting the temporal logics of cinematic narrative. Filmmaker readers know him well for his on-going The Blue Velvet Project, but he has other ventures, including recently, the “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” series. “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” was birthed when, while on a long, late-night drive, Rombes pulled over to the side of the road and decided to explore an abandoned barn nearby. There, he found a box containing film strips cut in 12-frame segments with the written directive, “Do Not Screen.” And then… (from Peggy […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2012 -
TRIBECA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #1: I WROTE THIS SONG FOR YOU, INDIEWOOD
How to take stock of the Tribeca Film Festival? 9/11 was a long time ago, after all. Bin Laden is dead. Rebuild the neighborhood, De Niro said. Bring back economic activity and all that. Perhaps the machinations of the real estate market took care of it. A classy sandwich down here costs $16. Not like I buy any food during the festival in Tribeca; it’s all free. Go to the Apple Store (in SoHo, but close enough) and have some wine. The 92YTribeca had bite-sized bacon cheeseburgers during GE’s-sponsored Film Forward shorts program yesterday. And if I actually want to […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 24, 2012 -
TRUTH AND DOCS AT TRIBECA
Truth-Telling from Mississippi to Israel to China to Texas Yes, truth is the essence of documentaries. But whose truth? What truth? In dangerous times, truth is elusive. When pain lingers, truth digs deeper into the obscure. Regardless, sometimes truth must come out. Sometimes there is no choice. Sometimes even fear is no match for truth — such as in Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. In 1965, filmmaker Raymond DeFelitta traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi to shoot a documentary for NBC News on racial tensions in the South. DeFelitta initially planned to capture the conflict from the perspective of Southern whites, yet […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 24, 2012 -
Five Questions with Journey To Planet X Director Josh Koury
Josh Koury is a chronicler of art on the fringes. In 2002, he founded the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival (BUFF), which he ran until 2006, screening weird and wonderful movies that had failed to find a home elsewhere, and in 2007 he directed the documentary feature We Are Wizards, which spotlighted Harry Potter fans who demonstrated their profound love of J.K. Rowling’s world by forming bands that performed “wizard rock.” Now Koury has teamed up with his frequent collaborator Myles Kane (the co-founder of BUFF and Koury’s editor on Wizards) to co-direct Journey to Planet X, a non-fiction feature that focuses […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 23, 2012 -
Five Questions with The Playroom Director Julia Dyer
It’s hard to write about Julia Dyer’s The Playroom without writing about the passage of time. It’s been sixteen-years since Dyer’s previous (and first) film, the Sundance hit Late Bloomers, and Dyer has finally crafted a proper follow-up. But beyond that, the film itself is quite concerned with the changes in attitude and perspective that time renders. Set in 1970s suburbia, The Playroom tells the story of a dysfunctional, alcohol-fueled dinner party, while also showing the same night through the eyes of a group of kids upstairs in the house’s attic. Premiering this week in Tribeca’s Spotlight section, the film […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Apr 20, 2012 -
Five Questions with Free Samples Director Jay Gammill
Watching the trailer for Jay Gammill’s new comedy Free Samples, one can almost hear the ghost of Clerks‘ Dante Hicks echoing in the distance – complaining, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” The latest in a long line of dead-end job dramedies, Free Samples follows slacker twenty-something Jillian (Jess Wexler) as she fills in for her friend handing out free samples all day from inside an ice cream truck. Premiering this week in Tribeca’s Spotlight section, Gammill’s film aligns an impressive ensemble of indie notables, including Wexler, Jesse Eisenberg, and Jason Ritter. Filmmaker: Can you talk a bit […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Apr 20, 2012 -
25 FILMS I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO AT THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
At last year’s Tribeca Film Festival I discovered two of my favorite films of the year, Alma Har’el’s Bombay Beach and Panos Cosmatos’s Beyond the Black Rainbow. I’m hoping for at least as good a track record this year, and in surveying the schedule I see more than enough potential candidates. Assuming I can successfully surmount my usual Tribeca challenge — getting into a film-festival headspace while working at home in New York — here are 25 films I’m interested in checking out. As befitting the mission of this magazine, there’s a heavy American independent focus, and I’ve also avoided […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2012
