Skip to main content

Starring New York: New York Films at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

For those who enjoy depictions of New York on film, several movies in this year's Tribeca Film Festival (April 22-May 3, 2009) give New York a featured role. Though not surprising for a festival that was created to reinvigorate lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11, the festival's New York-centered films sprawl out across the five boroughs. Glamorous Manhattan is still the backdrop for Steven Soderberg's The Girlfriend Experience, and Wall Street and the East and West Villages get their star turns. But other films include City Island, set in the Bronx, The Exploding Girl and Off and Running, set in Brooklyn, and Entre Nos, with Queens as the setting. And yes, Staten Island features in a spooky real-life tale with the film Cropsey.

Features

• Blank City. Encounters. Feature Documentary, 2009, 106 min. Directed by: Celine Danhier. East Village art scene of the 1970s with everything-goes film movements such as "No Wave Cinema" and "Cinema of Transgression."

• Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB. Discovery. Feature Documentary, 2009, 90 min
Directed by: Mandy Stein. The "Country Bluegrass Blues" club on the Bowery, founded by Hilly Kristal, becomes a punk, new wave heaven. Vintage performances by Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, Bad Brains, and The Ramones.

• City Island. Encounters. Feature Narrative, 2009, 100 min. Directed by: Raymond De Felitta. Story of a dysfunctional family living on a little-known island in the Bronx

• Con Artist. Discovery. Feature Documentary, 2009, 80 min. Directed by: Michael Sládek. Traces the rise and hard gall of Mark Kostabi, a star during the 1980s New York art world. A docu-comedy.

• Cropsey. Midnight. Feature Documentary, 2008, 84 min. Directed by: Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman. A spooky Staten Island tale of missing children and a real-life bogeyman.

• An Englishman in New York. Encounters. Narrative. 74 min. With John Hurt as the aging Quentin Crisp, living in New York. Also a portrait of a new sensibility as the gay community in the early 1980s first confronts AIDS.

• Entre nos. Discovery. Feature Narrative, 2009, 80 min. Directed by: Paola Mendoza and Gloria La Morte. After her husband abandons her, a mother must fend for herself and care for her children in the unfamiliar new world of Queens, New York. She finds a future in the city's recycling program.

• The Exploding Girl. World Narrative Feature Competition. Feature Narrative, 2009, 79 min. Directed by: Bradley Rust Gray. A maturation story of a college student returning home to Brooklyn for summer break with her longtime guy friend.

• The Girlfriend Experience. Spotlight. Feature Narrative, 2009, 77 min. Directed by: Steven Soderbergh. Five days in the life of a $2,000-an-hour Manhattan call girl, with adult film star Sasha Grey in the lead. Filmed with advanced digital technology.

• The Good Guy. Encounters. Feature Narrative, 2009, 90 min. Directed by: Julio DePietro. Story of a Wall Street star, his budding romance, and his mentoring of a new guy in the ways of "the street."

• Here and There. World Narrative Feature Competition. Feature Narrative, 2009, 90 min. Directed by: Darko Lungulov. A story of the competing cultures and climate of his home country of Serbia and his adopted New York.

• Off and Running. Discovery. Feature Documentary, 2009, 78 min. Directed by: Nicole Opper. Story of Avery, a typical Brooklyn teen, adopted by white Jewish lesbians, with a younger Korean brother and an older brother is mixed-race. Avery is black and grows curious about her biological African-American roots.

• P-Star Rising. Discovery. Feature Documentary, 2009, 83 min. Directed by: Gabriel Noble. Jesse Diaz, a rising star in the hip-hop world in the '80s, finds himself a broke single father in Harlem with two children to support. He puts his faith in his nine-year-old daughter, a talented rapper.

• Partly Private. World Documentary Feature Competition. Feature Documentary, 2009, 84 min. Directed by: Danae Elon. Circumcision story features locations around the world, including New York.

• Variety. Restored/Rediscovered. Feature Narrative, 1984, 97 min. Directed by: Bette Gordon. Bette Gordon's pioneering indie narrative about a young woman working as a ticket taker in a porn theater. A product of the downtown artist scene from the early 1980s, Variety credits include composer John Lurie, cinematographer Tom DeCillo, writer Kathy Acker, photographer Nan Goldin, and actor Spalding Gray. Shot on location in New York City at the lost landmarks of the Variety Theatre, Fulton Fish Market, Yankee Stadium, and a funkier Times Square. Preservation by Women's Film Preservation Fund of NYWIFT.

• Whatever Works. Feature Narrative, 2009, 92 min. Directed by: Woody Allen. The film will have its world premiere on the opening night of the film festival, April 22. New Yorker played by Larry David - not that there's anything wrong with that - abandons his upper-class life - hmmm - for bohemia - welcome to Greenwich Village. He meets a young girl from the South - uh-oh - and her family - double uh-oh. A Woody Allen movie, with many scenes filmed on location in bohemia, i.e. Greenwich Village, USA.

Shorts

• Camera Roll (for Taylor). Shorts in Competition: Documentary. Short Documentary, 2008, 3 min. Directed by: Joel Schlemowitz and Joel Schlemowitz. A city cine-poem, filmed in Brooklyn in the vicinity of the Gowanus Canal, shot on a single roll of 16mm film.

• Deadline. Shorts in Competition: Narrative. Short Narrative, 2008, 17 min. Directed by: Joseph Bakhash. A psychological drama of a tortured ex-convict meeting his prison guard in a diner.

• Nueva York. Shorts in Competition: Narrative. Short Narrative, 2008, 8 min. Directed by: Manolo Celi. Multiple stories of Latino life in New York.

Images from Empire Fulton Ferry State Park on April 16, 2009 by Walking Off the Big Apple. Starting next week look for my coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival on Reframe, a project of the Tribeca Film Institute.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

25 Radical Things to Do in Greenwich Village

A list of 25 things to Do in Greenwich Village with history of protest, old cafes, and signs of change. Hipstamatic iPhone images of contemporary Greenwich Village by Walking Off the Big Apple (Revised and updated.) Flipping through  Greenwich Village: A Photographic Guide by Edmund T. Delaney and Charles Lockwood with photographs by George Roos, a second, revised edition published in 1976, it’s easy to compare the black and white images with the look of today’s neighborhood and see how much the Village has changed. A long shot photograph of Washington Square taken up high from an apartment north of the park, and with the looming two towers of the World Trade Center off to the distant south in the background, reveals a different landscape than what we would encounter today.    On the north side of the park, an empty lot and two small buildings have since given way to NYU’s Kimmel Center and a new NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Center Life. The Judson Me...
Read more

Museums in New York Open on Mondays

UPDATED July 9, 2024 Please consult the museum websites for changes in days and hours. • Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)  10:30 am - 5:30 pm •  The Metropolitan Museum of Art  10 am - 5 pm • Whitney Museum  10:30 - 6 pm •  American Museum of Natural History  10 am - 5:30 pm • Jewish Museum  11 am - 6 pm • International Center of Photography (ICP)  11 am -7 pm • Guggenheim  10:30 am - 5:30 pm •  The Museum of the City of New York  10 am - 5 pm •  Cooper Hewitt  10 am - 6 pm •  Neue Galerie  11 am - 6 pm The Whitney Museum of American Art General Information  American Museum of Natural History Central Park West and 79th Street See the post, Big Things to See at the American Museum of Natural History . Cooper Hewitt 2 East 91st St. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Ave Jewish Museum 1109 Fifth Ave The Metropoli...
Read more

10 Short Walks from Grand Central Terminal

(updated March 2017) Famously crowded Grand Central Terminal functions as a major crossroads for the city, hosting busy commuters as they come and go from the suburbs via the Metro-North Railroad or within the city via a few subway lines, but the terminal also happens to be a good place to launch short walks. With its south side fronting E. 42nd Street and its massive structure interrupting Park Avenue, Grand Central provides quick access to many of the city's most well-known attractions. The New York Public Library and Bryant Park are only a couple of blocks away from the terminal, a quick jaunt on 42nd Street. And from there, Times Square is just another block or two farther west of the library, its neon shimmering in the distance. One wonders, standing near the intersection of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, how many souls have been lured away from their well-meaning library studies by the beckoning lights of the Theater District. Grand Central Terminal : Before setting...
Read more

From Penn Station to New York Landmarks: Measuring Walking Distance and Time in Manhattan

(revised 2017) How long does it take to walk from Penn Station/Madison Square Garden to well-known destinations in Manhattan? What are the best walking routes ? What if I don't want to see anything in particular but just want to walk around? In addition to the thousands of working commuters from the surrounding area, especially from New Jersey and Long Island who arrive at Penn Station via New Jersey Transit or the Long Island Rail Road, many people arrive at the station just to spend time in The City. Some have questions. Furthermore, a sporting event may have brought you to Madison Square Garden (above Penn Station), and you want to check out what the city offers near the event. This post if for you.  The map below should help you measure walking distances and times from the station to well-known destinations in Manhattan - Bryant Park , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the Empire State Building , Times Square , Rockefeller Center , Washington Square Park , the High Line ...
4 comments
Read more

25 Things To Do in Chelsea

On the High Line, with the Whitney Museum of American Art (revised and updated 2018) The phenomenal popularity of the High Line on the West Side has no doubt introduced many visitors to the pleasures of  Chelsea , the multifaceted eclectic neighborhood that stretches out below. On the west side of the rails, between W. 14th and W. 29th Streets or so, the  Chelsea Gallery District  is home to hundreds of contemporary art galleries in repurposed warehouses. New luxury residences rise up around these spaces, taking advantage of the stunning Hudson River views. On the east side of the line, the iconic Empire State Building comes into the picture, but closer in, the Gothic Revival outlines of the General Theological Seminary represent the neighborhood's roots in an earlier century. Chelsea is a remarkable neighborhood bound together by an artistic and visual history, but it's also a community held together by social institutions - schools, historic houses of worsh...
Read more

25 Things To Do Near the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

(updated 2016) The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) at 11 W. 53rd Street is near many other New York City attractions, so before or after a trip to the museum, a short walk in any direction could easily take in additional experiences. Drawing a square on a map with the museum at the center, a shape bounded by 58th Street to the north and 48th Street to the south, with 7th Avenue to the west and Park Avenue to the east, proves the point of the area's cultural richness. (A map follows the list below.) While well-known sightseeing stops fall with these boundaries, most notably Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the great swath of famous Fifth Avenue stores, cultural visitors may also want to check out places such as the Austrian Cultural Forum, the 57th Street galleries, the Onassis Cultural Center, and the Municipal Art Society. The image above shows an intriguing glimpse of the tops of two Beaux-Arts buildings through an opening of the wall inside MoMA's scu...
Read more