Ain't Nothin' Like The Real Thing: Hollywood Comes to New York

Abstract

W5T V 7 hen Robert De Niro's production company, Tribeca Films, announced its plans for a major film festival, there were murmurs of concern, if not outright consternation. For one thing, film festivals can take years to put together, and Tribeca Films claimed that their festival would be up and running in four months; another claim was that the Tribeca Film Festival would rival Cannes in its stellar quality. The purpose of the festival, of course, was the promotion of the downtown Manhattan area, so hard hit after the events of September 11, 2001. Could a major festival be organized in four months? From January 2002, when the announcement was made, to the beginning of May, could an entire festival be created? Would motion picture industry heavyweights (De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Martin Scorsese, et al.) be able to delegate responsibility effectively, in order to ensure effective facilitation of day-to-day festival management? The downtown Manhattan area already had played a significant role in the dramatic history of independent filmmaking in the United States; right now, many individuals and organizations important to independent filmmaking are domiciled in lower Manhattan, and one question was whether the true independent filmmaking community would be allowed some visibility in the industry-oriented Tribeca Film Festival. (Examples of independent film organizations in lower Manhattan would include the Filmmakers Coop, Anthology Film Archives, the Millennium Film Workshop, the Association of Independent Video and Film, Film/Video Arts, MIX, and The New Festival.)