What a Scene: The Tribeca Film Festival

By Kelly Monaghan

Tribeca comes alive as never before with the first annual Tribeca Film Festival. The five-day spectacle of parties, premieres, panel discussions, concerts and screenings at seven Downtown venues, kicks off on Wednesday May 8 and runs through Saturday, May 12.

At center ring of this sprawling cinematic circus, co-founded by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, is the competitive screening of 62 feature films, feature-length documentaries and short films. (Twelve percent discount for local residents. Call 866-941-3378.)

Only first-time filmmakers were allowed to compete, so the festival offers a chance to scout new directorial talent. There are some familiar names, too, with Campbell Scott, Blythe Danner, Peter Falk, Jeff Bridges, and Isabella Rosellini showing up in cast lists. At the festival’s end, a jury will present awards for best feature, best documentary, best short film, and best emerging filmmaker. Outside of the competition, the festival will unspool the Restored Classic Series, including Elia Kazan’s "Viva Zapata," Howard Hawks’s "Big Sky," and William Wellman’s "Story of G.I. Joe," all in new versions that reflect the filmmakers’ original vision. On Friday, May 10, the Tribeca Film Festival and Comedy Concert hopes to pack 10,000 people into Battery Park for a free show that promises "A-list musical and comedy performances."

Rounding out the celluloid smorgasbord are an International Film Showcase curated by Eamonn Bowles, and a Children’s Film Program put together by the NY International Children’s Film Festival.


Giant Carnival

Saturday, May 11

The Tribeca Film Festival takes to the street, Greenwich Street that is, with a carnival on Saturday May 11 from 9 to 5 that is expected to draw families to the neighborhood by the thousands.

The free Tribeca Family Festival takes over Greenwich from Hubert to Duane, offering street performers, puppet shows, food tents, celebrity storytellers, and a children's book fair courtesy of Scholastic Books. Cafe tables will line the east side of the street and, in some 30 tents on the west side, local restaurateurs and merchants will hawk their goods.

Small stages for clowns and jugglers will be at intersections and on the main stage, in front of the Smith Barney building, expect to see performances by local school groups and professionals alike.

For the simpler pleasures, children can jump rope and do chalk art on the side streets.

Kid Flicks

May 11 & 12

Coinciding with the Family Festival, the New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF), will present its Children’s Film Program on Saturday and Sunday, May 11 and 12. The line up of films such as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" (with never-before-seen footage) and "Castle in the Sky" by the acclaimed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki may have adults elbowing the kiddies aside for seats. Two series of short films from the past five years of the NYICFF target kids 4 to 10 and 8 to 16 respectively.

For more information on the Children’s Film Program, call 349-0330 or go to www.gkids.com.


Only in New York

"Her Soft Mouth Was the Road To Sin Smeared Violence!"

Don’t expect sunny travelogues of the Big Apple in the Best of New York series curated by Martin Scorsese. Forget "On the Town." Woody Allen’s "Manhattan" is as lighthearted as it gets. The 10-film series is curiously bookended by "Regeneration," a hammy 1915 silent melodrama that marked Raoul Walsh’s directorial debut, and the aforementioned Allen piece. The other selections showcase noir and noirish films from a 10-year period spanning the 40s and 50s. It was a screen era when molls talked tough and gangsters cracked wise and doing the right thing wasn’t always as black and white as the film stock on which these seamy tales were told.

Some of them, like Jules Dassin’s "The Naked City" (1948) and Elia Kazan’s "On the Waterfront" (1954) are classics. And Alexander Mackendrick’s "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957) has no doubt been dusted off at video stores across the city thanks to the recent Broadway show of the same name. Others are lesser known and worth a look. Stanley Kubrick’s "Killer’s Kiss" (1955), whose original tagline provides the quote above, doesn’t presage his later work as much as it does Scorsese’s own "Raging Bull." Its fight scenes, in and out of the ring, have a visceral power missing from today’s choreographed, enhanced audio slugfests. Anthony Mann’s "Side Street" (1950) quickly becomes an extended chase movie through a city strangely devoid of parked cars and people. Abraham Polonsky’s "Force of Evil" (1948), hailed by auteurists as

one of America’s great films, may be showing its age. It’s almost a parody of film-noir style, with its self-consciously portentous voice-over narration and odd angles. But Polonsky and cast, including an over-the-top John Garfield, pull it off. Rounding out the series are Alfred Hitchcock’s classic of paranoia, "The Wrong Man" (1956) and Fred Zinneman’s "A Hatful of Rain" (1957), about heroin addicts. It’s easy, not to mention fun, to see the series as a map of Scorsese’s artistic sensibilities, raised as he was on these same mean streets. Certainly these films reflect his fascination with the underworld, the pettier the better, and those who exist in society’s hidden corners. In this world, a single wrong move can plunge a man into a nightmare beyond comprehension. This New York is a dark and foreboding place, a metaphor for society’s lack of caring about the protagonists’ fates, a place where it is distressingly easy to be terribly alone. You’ll feel right at home.

Reel Life

They’re not all about New York, but the ten documentaries selected to compete in the Tribeca Film Festival’s juried series explore themes of multicultural fusion and conflict familiar to anyone steeped in New York history and culture.

"Hip Hop Hope," directed by Darrell Wilks, is one of the first documentaries to be shot in the city in the wake of September 11. Focusing on hip-hop artists, most of whom live far uptown from Ground Zero, the film offers a neglected perspective of post-9/11 New York. Also shining light on hip-hop and the street music scene is "Breath Control: The History of the Human Beat Box," directed by Joey Garfield and Jacob Craycroft. Pop falsetto singer Jimmy Scott, 76, is profiled in "Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew," directed by Matthew Buzzell.

Once it was New York that was the melting pot; now it’s the entire country. Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s "OT: Our Town" looks at a student production of Thornton Wilder’s New England stage classic at Dominguez High in Compton, Ca., the home town of gangsta rap. Alex Halpern’s "Nine Good Teeth" pays homage to his Italian grandmother and follows in the footsteps of Scorsese’s 1974 "Italianamerican" [sic]. "Chiefs," directed by Daniel Junge, spends two seasons with the basketball team at Wyoming Indian High School as they battle other teams and ethnic stereotypes on the way to the state championship. And "Spellbound," directed by Jeff Blitz, visits the National Spelling Bee to focus on inner-city, blue-collar, and immigrant kids striving to be the next Lisa Simpson.

In a nod to the literati, director Mark Moscowitz, in "Stone Reader," chronicles his obsessive search for Dow Mossman, a forgotten novelist whose 1972 book "The Stones of Summer" was a touchstone of Moscowitz’s youth. Also part of the series are "Black Chic’s [sic] Talking," directed by Lean Purcell and Brendan Fletcher, and "I’ll Sing For You (Je Chanterai pour Toi)," directed by Jacques Sarasin.