The Trib's Guide to The Tribeca Film Festival (April 22 - May 3)
"Zonad"
“It means someone in Peoria can have a festival experience,” said Genna Terranova, one of the festival’s programmers.
For Lower Manhattan, the festival again offers its trademark free attractions, including the hugely popular—and populated— street fair and “Drive-In.” (See sidebar at right).
Again, audiences will have a wide variety of titles to choose from—85 features and 47 shorts, including a robust international slate. As always, there will be post-screening Q&As with directors and free talks.
Although most of the festival’s screenings have migrated north of Canal Street, Downtown residents still get a $2 ticket discount (along with students and seniors) and the chance to buy tickets on April 18, a day before the general public. Buy them at Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St. Proof of residence below Canal Street is required. Prices are $16 on evenings and weekends and $8 on daytime weekdays and late nights: Schedule and tickets: tribecafilmfestival.org.
“Yodok Stories”
DOCUMENTARIES
From the top of the world, to three miles below its surface, to the bottom of the stories behind bird smuggling, Eliot Spitzer’s downfall, and the popularity of prog rock, documentary subjects this year are all over the map.Consider CLIMATE OF CHANGE, where we find teenagers in India rallying against the use of plastic, African villagers learning to harness solar power, Appalachians battling the big business behind strip mining. There is INTO THE COLD, a breathtaking voyage to the frozen tip of the earth. There is INTO ETERNITY, which takes us to a tomb, three miles below Finland, which is to be, the locals hope, the final resting place of 100,000 tons of nuclear waste. And there is THE TWO ESCOBARS, an intriguing look at two unrelated Colombians, Andres and Pablo, who shared a name and a fanatical love of soccer. One became a star player, the other an infamous drug lord. The film investigates the connection between crime and sports in Colombia and the surprising connections between the murders of both men.
Local viewers could probably suggest a name or two for the following documentary, which is listed as a work in progress: UNTITLED ELIOT SPITZER FILM follows the rise and fall of the former governor and “Sheriff of Wall Street.” More than a sad recap—popular politician with an eye toward the presidency torpedoes career by frequenting prostitutes—the film offers unique takes from Spitzer’s friends and enemies and connects the fall of the “Sheriff” with the fall of Wall Street.
Another work in progress, THE WESTERN FRONT, pulls off the bandages from the Iraq war as director Zachary Iscol, who fought in Al Anbar in 2004, returns to the province five years later in search of peace. Elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, smugglers are in search of birds and wealthy buyers. Falcon smuggling, we learn, is surprisingly lucrative. FEATHERED COCAINE explores the bagging of the birds, which are coveted by wealthy elites in the region, and looks at the links between the falcon trade and Saudi royals, CIA and KGB, the oil industry and Al Qaeda.
There is a different bit of dirty business exposed in GERRYMANDERING, a revealing look at redistricting in the United States and how it endangers democracy by locking in electoral outcomes. The far more personal and tragic side of Washington, D.C., is explored in THE OTHER CITY, which turns its cameras away from Capitol Hill and toward the city’s neglected neighborhoods, where three percent of the population is HIV-positive.
Not all the offerings are so stark. There is light and joy in this world to be explored. AMERICAN MYSTIC takes a pilgrimage across the rural landscape in search of alternative religions, checking in with a pagan priestess, a Spiritualist and a Native American sundancer along the way. FREETIME MACHOS is a journey of a different sort. It follows the fortunes of Finland’s worst amateur rugby team, centering on two defeated, domesticated modern men who join the team in desperate search of male bonding and at least one win. MONICA & DAVID is a love story. It follows the pair, who both have Down syndrome, as they prepare to wed. Keep Surfing follows six river surfers, an ode to going against the wave, to individual freedom, and to the people who have achieved happiness on a river wave.
Then there is VIDAL SASSOON THE MOVIE, a fast and sassy look at the man who liberated woman from the weekly visit to the salon by pioneering “wash and wear” styles and revolutionized hairdressing.
Finally, some of the documentaries are worth checking out for the soundtracks alone. From the Great White North comes RUSH: BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE, a look at the seminal progressive rock trio from Canada featuring an exploration of its early career, concert footage and interviews. From the B.Q.E. via the Long Island Expressway, comes LAST PLAY AT SHEA, which weaves the intersecting histories of a stadium, a team, and Long Island native Billy Joel, who was the last artist to perform at Shea Stadium.
“Entre Nos”
DRAMA
The road movie is about as old as the cinema itself. Many of the narrative offerings at this year’s festival follow the tried and true formula of a hero on an epic quest. Certainly not all of the following films take place on the open road, but many of them manage to mine compelling stories from the things their characters leave behind, carry along, or hope to find at the end of their journeys.There is a Chevy truck, a cross-country trip and a young man escaping the family business in ROAD, MOVIE, but you have not seen this film before. The setup may seem familiar, yet the scenery and scenario are refreshingly original. Here, our young driver is named Vishnu, the country is India, and the cast of characters he picks up along the way, including a wandering entertainer and a beautiful woman, make the journey one of a kind.
A bleak European future is the setting of the animated METROPIA. The year is 2024 and Europe is one, connected completely through a vast network of underground railways where unhappy workers go about their lives connected by an even more vast conspiracy to control them. The film, from Sweden, could be described as Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” from 1985, meets George Orwell’s “1984.”
It’s back to the old world and New Wave in SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL, a stylized, brash biography of 1970s punk and New Wave rocker Ian Dury. LEGACY transports us to modern-day Brooklyn, where an operative has returned home to deal privately and intensely with the part he played in a failed mission in Eastern Europe. WILLIAM VINCENT is the story of a criminal who flees New York after he falls in love with a gangster’s favorite call girl. But he secretly returns, intent on rescuing her.
Rural New York is the setting for the murder mystery MESKADA. Here, a Catskills detective is dispatched to a wealthy suburb to solve the murder of a teenager. But things get complicated as the clues lead him to a smaller manufacturing town and a class war between the two burgs ensues.
THE SPACE BETWEEN gives us an unlikely pair destined for Lower Manhattan in the unnerving days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A flight attendant from Texas makes it her mission to drive a 10-year-old Pakistani boy, who was traveling alone when all flights were grounded, to Manhattan when she learns that the boy’s father worked in the World Trade Center. LUCKY LIFE follows a group of friends who prepare for their goodbyes by taking a dying friend out for one last trip to the beach. EVERY DAY is a family drama, featuring a married TV writer suffering a midlife crisis, made all the more uncomfortable now that his father-in-law has moved in.
Rural 1930s Tennessee is the backdrop for GET LOW and the best laid plans of a loner who finally emerges from a hermit-like existence to stage his own funeral and reveal a shocking truth about how he came to be the way he is.
THE WHITE MEADOWS, from Iran, gives us a young traveler on a more fairy-tale-like journey. Our hero, Rahmat, sails from island to island off the coast of Iran to gather tears. It is a similarly emotional but more literally sad tale told in A BRAND NEW LIFE, from Korean director Ounie Lecomte. In this semi-autobiographical story, 9-year-old Jin-hee is delighted to accompany her father on a trip until she realizes the purpose of the trip is to deliver her to an orphanage. Also from Korea comes Paju, where a trip of a different sort lands a man on the run in his old home where his relationship with women is dissected against a background of a bleak landscape.
"Gefilte Fish"
SHORTS
Brief but true, abrupt and absurd, or succinctly poetic, the short film comes in many varieties. The festival manages this year to offer nearly 50 examples of the short form at its best, including an Academy Award winner. Here’s a look at just a few. It is what is said and left unsaid that lends poetry to the following short subjects. In the poignant KISS, a soldier shaves and says goodbye to his young son before departing on a military mission. In BRUCIE, it is a father and daughter who find a moment to connect. A faked suicide attempt brings well-meaning friends together to console a young woman in CRIED SUICIDE. And the neighbors have a few words in the Academy Award-winning THE NEW TENANTS.A number of the films are distinctly New York, including the tale of three Queens boys who find a wallet and set off in search of the owner, a prostitute named COOKIE. Another, SOMETHING IN THE AIR, follows an anti-hero determined to clean up the streets. BILLY AND AARON, a narrative based on the life of composer Billy Strayhorn, takes us back to the city’s jazz clubs of the 1940s. Then there is F--K, an only-in-New York sort of tale about people who would do anything to find a location for an event.
THE CRUSH is made of sweeter stuff. Here, a second grader challenges the boyfriend of his teacher, the object of his crush, to a duel. A football player and a high school band member square off after yet another loss in POI DOGS. Estranged siblings reunite following the death of their mother in ROOTS IN WATER. And finally, a timid sound man seeks out a Goth girl to reclaim what is rightfully his in EPIC FAIL.
Elvis and Madona (sic) fall in love. Some guy named Zonad falls to earth. Leon Trotsky is reincarnated as a Montreal teenager. Mahmud Nasir’s real name is, get this, Solly Shimsillewitz. Improbable setups? Check. Spoof-able icons? Check. Laughs? We’ll have to get back to you.
This year’s comedic offerings certainly promise a cast of quirky characters, but whether or not they can make with the funny remains to be seen. The previews, at least, are worth a chuckle. Let’s start with the most traditional-seeming of the bunch, BEWARE THE GONZO. It is from the nerds vs. the popular preps school of comedy which—and it doesn’t matter which circle you were in back in high school—is usually funny because it rings true. In this version, a young rebel journalist, Eddie “Gonzo” Gilman, champions the nerds and other misfits by giving them voice in a scrappy newspaper, launched as a rival to the school’s official paper, which is run by, you guessed it, the cool kids. Another teenage romp, MEET MONICA VELOUR, gives us an awkward young man who sets off in an, ahem, Wienermobile in search of his true love, an aging 1980’s porn star. He finds her, a single mother living in a trailer park, where hijinks and life lessons ensue.
THE TROTSKY gives us Leon Bronstein, a teenager with other things on his mind, like revolution. Leon believes that he is the reincarnation of Soviet thinker Leon Trotsky. He’s kicked out of his posh private school after organizing a hunger strike and sent to a public high school where he has a few ideas to share about students’ rights. THE INFIDEL is a similar tale of mistaken identity. Mahmud Nasir is an observant Muslim, or at least he was raised to believe that he was. Turns out he was adopted, his birth mother was Jewish, and his real name is Solly Shimsillewitz. What to do now, Mahmud? Where to turn? Luckily, “Solly” meets Lenny, a drunken cabbie who agrees to give him lessons in Jewishness.
ELVIS AND MADONA is a romantic comedy, but the star-crossed lovers are not who the title suggests. In fact, few things in this film are as they initially seem. Here, Elvis is a Brazilian biker chick and Madona is a leggy blonde transvestite. The plot involves Madona’s dreams of putting on a spectacular drag show and the efforts of Elvis, who is an aspiring photographer and full-time pizza deliverer, to make her dreams come true. Confused? All will be explained. (The film, in Portuguese, has English subtitles.)
Finally, there is ZONAD, which is in English but probably could use a little explaining. You see, there is this happy family named Cassidy living in an Irish town where, by appearances, the 1950s have never ended. And then along comes this visitor in a cheap-looking alien costume who claims to be from outer space. Is he for real? Who knows? But one thing is certain: Zonad’s 21st-century ways and cynical attitude are out of place at the Cassidy dinner table and things around this hamlet may never be the same.
PANELS and Q&As
Got questions? The festival’s panel discussions and Q&A sessions with filmmakers and industry insiders provide a peek into the process. After-screening talks include conversations with directors, including Edward Burns and Madeleine Sackler; chats with screenwriters about the art of storytelling; technical talk about digital editing; and ruminations on the future of independent film.
FAMILY STREET FEST
Rain or shine, the show goes on—and what a show it is! The festival’s annual street fair on May 1, 10 a.m.–6 p.m., has storytellers, puppeteers, sand sculptors, Broadway performances, arts and crafts, face painters, dance troupes, gymnastics teams, school choirs and more. Families can walk the red carpet and pose with their favorite stars from Madame Tussaud’s. Activities take place on Greenwich from Harrison to Chambers Streets, in Washington Market Park and at Borough of Manhattan Community College. And it’s all free. For information, go to tribecafilmfestival.org.
THE ‘DRIVE-IN’
As usual, the festival’s urban version of a drive-in is light and family-friendly. A bonus is the activities that precede the films, all of which take place on the World Financial Plaza beginning at 6 p.m.; the films are screened at 8:15 p.m. Here’s a rundown:
Thursday, April 22 “El Espiritu de la Salsa” (“The Spirit of Salsa”) Lonely hearts meet in Spanish Harlem once a week at a dance school, where they learn the art of salsa. They have only six weeks to rehearse for a public performance. The activity: Live salsa bands, salsa pros, salsa lessons, and dance contests.
Friday, April 23 “Big” At a carnival, a boy wishes he were big, and his dream comes true. He takes a job at a toy company, but not surprisingly, he soon misses his childhood. The activity: Face painters, fortune tellers, games, trivia contests, music.
Saturday, April 24 “The Birth of Big Air” Story of Mat Hoffman, who entered the BMX biking circuit at age 13. The activity: BMX street tricks and freestyle demonstrations plus stunts featuring Mat Hoffman.
Evenings and weekends: $16; daytime weekdays and late nights: $8. Tickets for Downtown residents ($8) on sale April 18 at Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St. Proof of zip code below Canal Street is required for discount. General public tickets: on sale April 19. Schedule and tickets: tribecafilmfestival.org.
SCREENING LOCATIONS
Village East Theater, 181 2nd Ave.; SVA Theater, 333 West 23rd St.; Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St.; Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St.; Chelsea Clearview Cinemas, 260 West 23rd St.