Night & Day At the Tribeca Film Festival

Talk to anyone involved with the approaching Tribeca Film Festival, and it’s evident from the outset that they are acutely aware this is more than just a movie event — it’s an entertainment brand, one that continues to split and jell into ever more specific minifestivals and events. It was with this mindset that programmer Nancy Schaefer, who has been with the festival since the beginning, first conceived the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival — a separate series making its premiere this year that not only brings new films to the festival, but has terrific potential to broaden the larger Tribeca brand.“My desire when I started talking about it was: How do we get people who don’t go to independent films to come out for these independent films, and for Tribeca?” Ms. Schaefer said. “How do we get that message out, that there are films out here for you, that you’ll want to see.”One of the answers, she said, is the sports film festival — a mix of 14 titles that offer various stories of competition, from jazz band battles to intense poker games to the life story of the legendary Mexican boxer, Julio César Chavez.In a press release announcing the event, Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal pointed to the history of the event and noted that already “over the last five festivals, we have shown almost 30 narrative and documentary films which explore sports and their audiences.”Given this historical level of interest in the genre, and the sheer number of sports films that were being submitted for consideration, Ms. Schaefer said Tribeca organizers began tentatively discussing a sports film series with omnipresent sports network ESPN while preparing last year’s festival. Plans were finalized last fall, and Ms. Schaefer said the subsequent response has been staggering. In just a year, about 150 titles were submitted, competing for the final slate of 14.One of the films, Benson Lee’s “Planet B-Boy,” is a documentary about an international break-dancing competition and a product of the Tribeca All-Access program, which pairs aspiring filmmakers with industry insiders. Another, Zak Penn’s elaborate mockumentary “The Grand,” features an unlikely poker game involving Woody Harrelson, the comedian David Cross, and the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, as well as other famous personalities.One of the most eagerly awaited titles is Michael Apted’s documentary “The Power of the Game,” which ties together six story lines from the 2006 World Cup of soccer, chronicling stories of triumph and adversity from around the globe as they play out against one another on sports’ grandest stage.Ms. Schaefer also pointed to a handful of films that don’t seem at first glance to feature traditional sports. Seth Gordon’s “The King of Kong” uses the classic early video game “Donkey Kong” as an entry point into the world of competitive gaming, where die-hard fans compete to break world records on classic arcade games. Rob Klug’s “Unstrung” focuses its gaze on high school tennis players who compete each year to win the junior national championship. Bruce Broder’s “Chops” highlights the annual “Essentially Ellington” competition based at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which invites high school jazz bands from around the country to compete.And that’s just half the bill.“The response was sort of overwhelming,” Ms. Schaefer said. “There was a huge crop of films to pull from, and it was clear that there was a lot of excitement about being part of this.”More than just being featured as part of the ESPN series, all of these sports films — 12 of which are making their world premieres — screen in competition, vying for the Tribeca Audience Award and the festival’s Best Feature Film Award.But lest New Yorkers believe this is just a program of films, the ESPN series will culminate with a Tribeca Talks panel discussion titled “No Pain…No Gain…” featuring former New York Giant Tiki Barber, who will discuss his recent transition from the gridiron to the broadcast booth.There also will be a special “Sports Saturday” program, scheduled for the last Saturday of the fest, in which visitors will have a chance to watch and participate in a variety of sporting events, including a BMX bike jump, a Giants training camp, and a live stunt performance by the New York Red Bulls street soccer team.Looking beyond 2007, organizers are hoping the ESPN Sports Festival will become a staple of the larger Tribeca program. Ms. Shaefer said she hopes it will become a stand-alone event that occurs in New York — or elsewhere — at some other point in the year, helping filmmakers and athletes to connect with a whole new crowd of moviegoers.MIDNIGHT SERIESAbove and beyond the stream of casual moviegoers making their way down Varick Street, there are three subcultures gleefully coexisting at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival — the 24-hour cinema gorgers, the gregarious partiers and, most interestingly, the night owls. While the first two groups relish in making a day of the film fest, the other band of fans prefers to digest its movies — most often cult comedies and gruesome horror marathons — when the moon is high and the theater boisterous.While many film festivals offer these types of festival-goers a few titles on select Friday and Saturday nights, Tribeca makes an active effort to give them a program all their own, hyping the “Midnight” section alongside the Tribeca “Encounters” series, which highlights unconventional works from both established and emerging artists, and the “Restored/Rediscovered” series, which presents new restorations of films from around the world that have either disappeared from view in this country or were never properly exhibited here.Perhaps most indicative of the freewheeling and lighthearted nature of the “Midnight” section is this year’s most peculiar entry: Jonathan King’s “Black Sheep,” which takes the timely subject of animal cloning and then mixes it with one of nature’s most unlikely creatures — sheep — in a horror film about a ravenous cadre of white cloned monsters let loose by man’s mortal enemy: environmental activists.Yes, this is TriBeCa at midnight — the kind of addictive silliness unleashed when the more serious filmgoers have gone to bed.The list of Midnight entries this year — including 11 films, six of which will be making their world premieres — is one of the more diverse lineups in recent memory. Jim Hickey’s “Dirty Sanchez,” about a group of British daredevils (the festival freely describes as “‘Jackass’ on crack”) promises to be one of the more popular draws.The stand-up comedian Jamie Kennedy takes on rowdy, ravenous, and rude spectators in Michael Addis’s documentary “Heckler,” which is sure to be a must-see for those hundreds of New York stand-up comedians who confront contentious audiences on a nightly basis. Keven Undergaro’s “In the Land of Merry Misfits” looks to be a lock for the section’s “trippy” entry, telling the story of a college graduate who finds himself trapped it a land of twisted fairy tales, desperate to escape and win back his girlfriend.A handful of darker titles focuses on our collective fears, both old and new. Teng Huatao’s “The Matrimony” tells the story of a widower who marries another only to find his new wife’s body is inhabited with the spirit of his lost love. If that’s not creepy enough, Jim Mickle’s “Mulberry Street” concerns a deadly virus tearing Manhattan apart and being spread by — what else — rats.Two films, “Scott Walker – 30th Century Man” and “The Workshop,” offer lighter alternatives, the first a musician documentary about the man behind the album “The Drift” and the second a tantalizing story about a filmmaker in search of answers who finally lands at a California workshop led by a man who advocates sexual experimentation and claims to know about the existence of aliens.And what midnight program would be complete without a vampire film? In “Rise: Blood Hunter,” the Commish (Michael Chiklis) and Lucy Liu star in a story about a reporter who awakes one day to the surprising realization that she is in a morgue, no longer human, and hungry for the taste of blood.Fairy tales, freak-shows, and fornication; just another year of midnight films at Tribeca. Beware of the full moon.

Night & Day At the Tribeca Film Festival

Night & Day At the Tribeca Film Festival

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