Features
Touting its five-year anniversary, the Tribeca Film Festival is currently screening more than 274 films throughout Manhattan. Since the festival’s rapid initiation in 2002 headed by actor Robert De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal, the Tribeca Film Festival has both prided and promoted itself on dedication to revitalizing lower Manhattan, which experienced both an economic slump and a surge of residents relocating following the events on September 11th, 2001. 2006 marks the first year Tribeca has expanded its locations for exhibition, now screening films on the Upper West Side, Midtown, and the East Village in anticipation of the large draw the festival has for both New York City residents and tourists. Although the Tribeca Film Festival still maintains a strong focus on the events and aftermath of September 11th, specifically this year with the premiere of United 93, along with documentaries such as The Falling Man, the festival often feels as though it has somewhat of an identity crisis, with a hodgepodge of screening selections that often baffle (such as the inclusion of the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen film New York Minute in 2004) and frustrate, considering the dizzying amount of films available to the public. With lower Manhattan’s economic status now stable and still growing, it will be interesting to see how Tribeca continues to develop in the next several years and how it will continue to relate itself to the ever-changing isle of Manhattan. With the barrage of films available for review we have chosen a select few works not only premiering stateside at this year’s festival, but in certain cases unavailable for viewing again in the near future. The Tribeca Film Festival runs for ten days throughout Manhattan, and will be closing on Sunday, May 7th.
Introduction by Jenny Jediny
The search for identity, so often the connecting thread in Marker’s work, feels fleshed out here with the persistent questioning of the feline’s appearance in the changing emotional climate of France during late 2001-2002. The cat’s appearance seems to have struck an inspirational note for Marker, prompting curiosity, but also a sense of comfort and resolve following the low morale in France after September 11th.
At a film festival known for its celebrity showcases, multiplex-friendly foreign films, and (at least this year) 9/11 facsimiles, Svankmajer’s film is a bold riposte, a lesson in extremity, and a reminder that art can be challenging, aggressive, hilarious, and repellent all at once.
In the early 1990’s, a man named Alan Conway deceived dozens of people — ranging from complete strangers to former New York Times’ theatre critic Frank Rich — that he was, in fact, film director Stanley Kubrick. Indeed, Stanley Kubrick, even though Conway was sans beard, British, homosexual, and knew a mere handful of the director’s films.
Shot after shot shows men and women jumping to their death, although they retain an eerie individuality; each person jumps in a particular way, whether scrambling over the side to a quick leap or stretching back with arms held out, holding a diver’s pose for a split second before heading headfirst over the edge.
