Sunday, May 4--------Although it is tempting, it is actually quite difficult to take a diverse event as the Tribeca Film Festival and tie its themes or influences into one neat bow. Film festivals are, after all, about diversity and multiplicity of voices. While the programmers of the event certainly have an overall picture of how the films interact with one another, oftentimes the influences are not that clearly on the surface, and only become revealed days after their initial, sometimes acci...
Saturday, May 3------One of the more intriguing new players in the digital download field is Film Annex. Through its website, Filmannex.com, the company's mission is to provide a new channel for promoting filmmakers and their works as well as distributing their films — to anyone with an Internet connection and selective corporate clients. Since art and independent films (particularly non-English language films) are often hugely popular at film festivals, but suffer at the distribution level t...
One of the fab parties this week at the Tribeca Film Festival was the Tuesday evening bash at BAR 13, hosted by Wallflower Press, the largest publisher of film books and magazines in the United Kingdom. Yoram Allon, Editorial Director and Publisher, was in Gotham with his wife Nicky Allon and editor Ian Haydn Smith as part of the company’s North American launch of the INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE, the authoritative Yearbook of International Cinema, and FILM & FESTIVALS MAGAZINE, a quarterly coveri...
Although it is tempting, it is actually quite difficult to take a diverse event as the Tribeca Film Festival and tie its themes or influences into one neat bow. Film festivals are, after all, about diversity and multiplicity of voices. While the programmers of the event certainly have an overall picture of how the films interact with one another, oftentimes the influences are not that clearly on the surface, and only become revealed days after their initial, sometimes accidental, pairing. There ...
Saturday, May 3-------Following a packed 10-day marathon of film screenings, industry events, seminar panels and chic parties, the Tribeca Film Festival ended this weekend with the announcement of the winners of the juried awards in several categories. The World Competition winners were chosen from 12 narrative and 12 documentary features from 18 countries. Two awards were also given to honor New York films, which were chosen from seven narrative and nine documentary features. Awards were als...
Friday, May 2-------With all the films being screened in a concentrated 10 days at the Tribeca Film Festival, it takes a mix of courage and chutzpah to organize a staged reading to attract distribution and financing interest. But that's exactly what the powers that be at Paradigm Shift Productions and Streamline Filmworks pulled off this past Monday.The film in question is MONEY MATTERS from award-winning short film director Ryan Richmond. The presentation included a showing of the short film ...
Thursday, May 1--------One of the fab parties this week at the Tribeca Film Festival was the Tuesday evening bash at BAR 13, hosted by Wallflower Press, the largest publisher of film books and magazines in the United Kingdom. Yoram Allon, Editorial Director and Publisher, was in Gotham with his wife Nicky Allon and editor Ian Haydn Smith as part of the company’s North American launch of the INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE, the authoritative Yearbook of International Cinema, and FILM & FESTIVALS M...
Monday, April 28-------Last evening at the fab Hotel QT off Times Square, the oranges were out in force in the Big Apple for the annual fete presented by Film Florida, a non-profit organization representing a variety of Florida film commissions, industry associations and labor organizations. The Apples And Oranges Party was set around the indoor pool of the Hotel QT, bringing a bit of Florida sunshine to the somewhat gloomy weather of New York in late April.Film Florida is promoting the Sunshine...
Monday, April 28---------One of the great pleasures of attending a film festival is the serendipity that often occurs when one sees one film after another, finding thematic connections or differences between them that delight the soul and stimulate the mind. I had just such an occurrence the other day, seeing two British films back to back. It just happened that the films were screening after one another, but it made me realize how much I love and appreciate both the high and the low in Britis...
One of the great pleasures of attending a film festival is the serendipity that often occurs when one sees one film after another, finding thematic connections or differences between them that delight the soul and stimulate the mind. I had just such an occurrence the other day, seeing two British films back to back. It just happened that the films were screening after one another, but it made me realize how much I love and appreciate both the high and the low in British cinema. I’ve been a fan...
Sunday, April 27------It is undoubtedly one of the seminal films of the 1960s and a harbinger of the sci-fi and special effects-laden films of such blockbusters as the STAR WARS series, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and BLADE RUNNER. It is the grand-daddy of "trippy" special effects films.....2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, a masterpiece from directing legend Stanley Kubrick that is being revived on its 40th anniversary at the Tribeca Film Festival.2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was one of th...
Sunday, April 27-----Even in the cloistered environment of a film festival, the sounds of war are never too distant or far from view. At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, a number of films look at the implications of the highly unpopular conflict for which, to coin a term of one of last year's excellent documentaries on the subject, seems to have "no end in sight".In the film BAGHDAD HIGH, from UK directors Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter, four classmates at an embattled high school...
Saturday, April 26-------Back in the mid 1990s, a party promoter named Michael Schmidt had a novel idea: drag queens dumping the lipsynching routine to sing rock and roll live onstage. No one knew what to expect when they first opened the doors on the fateful night that SqueezeBox! was born in downtown Manhattan. With Mistress Formika presiding as hostess, the drag queens rocked New York nightlife in a way no one had ever seen before. Movie stars, drag queens, punks, and everyone in between ...
Saturday, April 26---------The Tribeca Film Festival, along with the Tribeca Film Institute announced the winners of the fifth annual Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards. Tribeca All Access (TAA) is a program designed to help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities. Awards were announced at Budakkan in New York City.Award winners include:Narrative section prize – Pete Chatmon for his current screenplay, ...
Saturday, April 26-------Each year at the Tribeca Film Festival, a group of acclaimed New York-based artists contributes original artwork that is exhibited during the Festival before serving as filmmaker awards for 13 winning directors. This year's art pieces are on display at The New School Kellen Gallery at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center.2008 Tribeca Film Festival Artists John AlexanderJohn Alexander will contribute The Screamer, a 2008 oil-on-canvas depicting a crow and its mirror image...
Friday, April 25-----New York City has had a love affair with French film for more than 75 years. From the silent film era to today’s Gallic gems, French films are consistently the highest audience attractions and the non-English cinema most represented in the Big Apple. The Tribeca Film Festival, which began its first day of screenings today, adds to this “Francophile” tendency with the premiere of several films a la francais. Five dramatic features dot the Festival’s various film st...
Wednesday, April 23-----It is only right that a film festival that is so closely associated with New York open with a New York film. That is what happens this evening as the 7th Tribeca Film Festival opens its movie marathon with the World Premiere of BABY MAMA, written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Michael McCullers.The feminist comedy, which will be released by Universal Pictures later this month, , brings together some of New York's sharpest talent, including actress/writer...
