https://independent-magazine.org/2021/06/30/20th-annual-tribeca-festival-june-9-20/
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
In the spring of 2002, Jane Rosenthal, Craig Hatkoff and Robert De Niro launched the first Tribeca Film Festival to help revitalize a hurting New York City and an economically devastated downtown neighborhood. They knew it wouldn’t be easy selling the concept of taking in a movie and dropping some money in the restaurants and… Read more »
Summer of Soul: Ahmir Khalib Thompson: USA: 2021: 116 minutes You won’t find a contemporary musician who doesn’t have an opinion on the impact of the original Woodstock festival in a farmer’s pasture in Bethel, New York, over a long weekend in August, 1969. (Your critic was there on business, delivering urgent album cover art… Read more »
The conventional wisdom on a conventional 50th anniversary festival would be to first applaud the curators who brought world class filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt and Pedro Almodovar, Spike Lee and Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-wai and Guillermo del Toro, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Agnieszka Holland to audiences far and wide, starting way back in 1972. No one… Read more »
Spring is busting out all over New York City, with cinemas scheduled to open March 5 (25% capacity, 50-seat maximum). Online, Film at Lincoln Center and UniFrance are showcasing 18 new vital and vibrant examples of contemporary French filmmaking. The 26th annual edition includes new work from returning filmmakers plus six debut dramas. All 18… Read more »
Sure, it was sorely disappointing not to view the 24 narrative dramas, documentaries and shorts up on the big screens at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. That’s where NYJFF, co-sponsored by The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center, shows its annual festivals. But the real loss for this viewer—an irreplaceable loss—came in not being… Read more »
Do you remember the last movie you saw in a real theater, up on a big screen? Our memories grow more remote by the day. For this viewer it was a screening of the sumptuous 150-minute Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains. Directed by Gu Xiaogang, Dwelling is a multi-generational family saga that slowly unscrolls as… Read more »
Consider for a moment what’s been recently showing in two very different movie-going Americas. On Oct. 30 The New York Times reported that the Park Plaza Cinema in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, had just opened Liam Neeson in Honest Thief to 72 patrons. “It was the largest single-day attendance the independently owned five-screen theater… Read more »
How about a nice round of applause for filmmaker/artist and ‘Pope of Trash’ John Waters, pictured here with the poster (silkscreen printed on Cougar 130lb natural paper) he and Globe Poster designed for the 58th New York Film Festival. “I always knew I’d get my ass in there somehow…in 2020 we have to reinvent movie-going… Read more »
Since spring of 2002, when downtown Manhattan was in the fragile beginnings of recovery from the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Tribeca Film Festival’s short subjects have been among the most anticipated films in the festival’s annual offerings. Tribeca was the first New York film festival to seriously highlight shorts. Sharon Badal, VP… Read more »
You’ll forgive your 81-year-old Manhattan moviegoer if his first three reviews below putter about, pausing to stare at the pleasure of spending a few more evenings in the dark with two of France’s leading ladies. Simply put, these women were two of this viewer’s youthful heartthrobs. They were so, so French! Anouk Aimee, now 87,… Read more »