At a crossroads, the recent Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), which ran April 21 to May 2, had its foot on the accelerator and was looking for road signs. Crossroads in today’s complex new entertainment and media world can crisscross in a multitude of directions and film festivals, like all in the movie game, are without a compass.

Thus, “Any Which Way That Works,” while not yet a movie title, seemed an apt theme for the ninth installment of Tribeca Enterprises’ downtown New York event. This year “downtown” again did not favor Tribeca, as the fest reclaimed venues in other parts of lower Manhattan (Chelsea and the East Village saw most of the action), moving further from the Tribeca neighborhood where the 9/11 attacks and aftermath inspired the festival’s birth.
While still offering some terrific films in its program, TFF this year seemed especially intent upon making mega-media impact and profits. Such goals are reasonable, but maybe not at the expense of better serving the art and craft of film and the industry that supports it.

For the first time, “any which way” reflected how TFF (through its Tribeca Enterprise parent) was testing new strategies to exploit new platforms and revenue streams—all of this, of course, in an era of digital abundance when all sectors of film (and other media) scramble any which way to identify models that work.

2010 saw TFF, with founding partner American Express, launch Tribeca Film, a distribution unit, and Tribeca Film Festival Virtual, which made available online to “passholders” eight fest features, many shorts, and some events.

Tribeca Film is a bold, cheeky step. The new distribution platform acquired 12 independent features from the fest. (Is that proper protocol?) Tribeca, with big-bucks funding from partner American Express, made deals with the major cable operators and sites like YouTube and Amazon so that a number of the fest’s feature premieres were available to viewers on demand (and like other VOD players, TFF giddily touted the potential for 40 million viewers). In all, 11 of the 12 Tribeca Film titles are headed post-fest to theatres (Tribeca runs the two-screen Tribeca Cinemas), home-video, airlines, etc. This Tribeca Film distribution initiative, which now puts financial/credit-card giant American Express in film distribution, will be a year-round business.

TFF has also brought on tons of sponsors (too numerous to mention) and ratcheted up its branding efforts in merchandising. There were the usual TFF products like t-shirts, hoodies and mugs, supplemented this year by three models of water bottles, even one for dogs.

Big premieres and parties abounded. And flirting with the fashion and publishing worlds, the fest made an arrangement with events production and marketing giant IMG, which produced, distributed and hawked a festival “Daily” at every fest site. The flashy, oversized publication teemed with pictures and gossip about celebs.

It wasn’t just the festival that maneuvered any which way to identify models that work. Players in exhibition made their debuts at Tribeca to test new ideas in direct outreaches to filmmakers.

Cinedigm, a new TFF sponsor this year, pitched its “Million Dollar Movie” program by way of a panel comprising, among others, company execs Jonathan Dern and Michele Martell and producer J. Todd Harris. Attendees got a brief backgrounder on digital cinema (“Soon there will be no more film,” Dern informed) and how digital cinema in theatres works.

Filmmakers were no doubt interested to learn that the “Million Dollar Movie” program gives their pictures a national release on guaranteed screens in finely targeted markets and an appropriate marketing campaign. This latter will include trailer creation and post-screening in-theatre discussions and interviews. Filmmakers in most cases must fork over that eponymous million to make this all happen, but Cinedigm will split box office. Queried by indie distribution and marketing vet Mark Lipsky about what the split might be, Cinedigm sent back a “See us later about that” response. Apparently, the answer isn’t clear-cut, as each deal will be unique and customized to filmmaker needs.

The program’s virtues are primarily the targeting and awareness created for a film and the fact that guaranteed Cinedigm releases will better enable participating filmmakers to entice sponsors to their projects. Dern also touted the fact that the company works with “seasoned exhibitors” who will assure the integrity of the collection process.

In this discussion, producer Harris noted that he is “shocked” at how slow theatres have been in revising their pricing. Friday nights, he suggested, should cost more than Monday nights and filmgoers should in many cases pay according to the type of film and the theatre amenities offered. But digital will eventually bring more aggressive thinking and flexibility regarding ticket pricing, the panel concurred.

AMC Theatres also made its festival bow announcing AMC Independent, “a renewed commitment to advancing and expanding independent film” by way of designating about 78 theatres to provide regular independent programs. (The number of screens per venue varies.)

AMC had the similar AMC Select several years back, but it faded away because the circuit didn’t give it the support needed. Now the chain has ramped up the marketing for the new AMC Independent by exploiting online options like sending out e-mail blasts and using the popular social sites. It is also getting its theatre managers more involved in the new indie program. In the spirit of “any which way,” AMC is also testing the acquisition and marketing of indie titles for exclusive AMC showings.

Even New York’s “mom-and-pop” theatre The Quad made use of festival space and traffic with its handout proposing “one-stop shopping for DIY filmmakers,” with the cinema as the right partner for self-distribution.

And Google and YouTube used the festival to get into the action. Their presentation to the independent community trumpeted their on-site distribution model as non-exclusive and allowing filmmakers more than 50% of revenues and the ability to set their own pricing.

Tribeca’s “Is the Sky Really Falling?” panel, moderated by former Sundance vet Geoffrey Gilmore and now chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises, delivered “a closer look at the future of film distribution.” The consensus was that with the sky is still up there, but, as Gilmore put it, “we’re at the end of a cycle and distribution is evolving into something else.”

But with discussions about how much audiences and media environments and habits have changed, the conundrum of reaching audiences today was the focus. Illustrating the challenge, Magnolia Pictures president Eamonn Bowles said that even markets that once seemed obvious for specialty product might not be. His example was Ft. Worth, which he described as an arty “cultural hub” where filmgoers don’t go to art films. A big problem for theatrical, he observed, is that “twenty-somethings have an abundance of content available at the mere push of a button.”



Panelists summed up the audience problem as a “generational shift” that leaves unsolved how to reach the younger members. Maybe the filmmakers themselves can help, suggested AMC Theatres VP of specialty and alternative content Nikkole Denson-Randolph and filmmaker/film lawyer Marc Simon. They agreed that the big failing is that filmmakers don’t know their target audience and don’t think enough about marketing.

Arvind Ethan David of production company Slingshot stressed how important it is for smaller films to generate “conversation,” unlike Hollywood movies where all the talk is before the release. These conversations, of course, must bubble on the Web. Said AMC’s Denson-Randolph, “We now have communities on our website and are asking producers to provide content that will incite conversation.”

Aware the U.S. and the West are behind in the digital transition, Efe Cakarel, founder of popular film website Les Auteurs, suggested that taking a close look at Tokyo and Beijing and other Asian locations will provide a true sense of where media consumption and trends are going. Technology is beside the point, he offered. The challenge is to understand consumer behavior.

The importance of social media and the Web got due attention. Simon suggested that “the next big film jobs” will not be in film sales, financing or traditional marketing but will reward those who can function as “social-media branding strategists.”

Producer Ted Hope groused about theatre ticket prices, except those for 3D event pictures which seem fair. Panelists agreed that lower prices for smaller films might work.

And VOD, when the films and timing are right, can work. Magnolia’s Bowles, whose indie distribution company is heavily involved in the VOD that entrepreneur-owner Mark Cuban has long championed, said that the lion’s share of their distribution revenues come from the $10 or $11 subscribers pay for the VOD premieres that occur prior to the theatrical releases.

But in spite of all the turmoil, the theatrical window, panelists agreed, remains the most valuable for filmmakers and audiences alike.

TFF’s films, divided into a number of categories, again this year represented a variety of genres, provenance and appeal.

The generally high quality might be a reflection of the fest’s continued selectivity. There were a record 2,333 feature submissions, of which only 85, including an impressive 44 world premieres, were selected, a continuing decline from the well over 110 films that unspooled in the event’s first seven installments. (Last year’s similar 85 features was the first pullback.)

Again, there were the big noisemakers with the attendant parties and media attention, but few if no press screenings and very limited public access. In the case of Shrek Forever After, which had its world premiere and marked the fest’s first 3D offering, there also came some tepid word of mouth.

Other high-profile selections, like Alex Gibney’s work-in-progress documentary about former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and his completed My Trip to Al-Qaeda, are destined to make noise in their commercial releases once they land distributors.

The latter film features Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Islam expert Lawrence Wright reflecting on 9/11, the impediments to positive change, and the despair and mores in Muslim countries that contribute to the rise of extremism and terrorism. The research and coverage of the problem are vast and Wright is a compelling commentator. But audiences may question why the matter of American policy toward Israel and the Palestinian problem was left out of the film’s conversation.

TFF was almost a Gibney mini-film festival. He is one of several directors in another noisemaker, the doc Freakonomics, based on the best-selling book.

The strongest of the documentary and narrative fiction features were solid reminders that any which way you look at it, the best way is the old way of delivering compelling, entertaining, emotionally rich, well-made stories with characters and subjects that interest viewers.

Fatih Akin’s Hamburg-based, deliciously comic and very smart Soul Kitchen also makes a strong case for the value of an assured filmmaker’s stamp by way of dazzling style. Tapping a populist zeitgeist, the film follows young restaurant owner Zinos (co-writer Adam Bousdoukos) as he struggles with a dying business, a girlfriend lost to Shanghai, a trouble-prone brother (a pitch-perfect Moritz Bleibtreu), and a noxious developer out to get his property. The fine acting, eye-pleasing production values (great cityscapes of Hamburg and snappy editing), a fabulous music track, and a serious cool factor assure the film will click with young art house audiences when IFC releases it in August.



TFF prize-winner When We Leave, filmmaker Feo Aladag’s story of the plight of an abused wife in Turkey who flees to the home of her assimilated Turkish family settled in Berlin, is indeed a winner on many counts and deserves time on theatre screens. Star Sibel Kekilli’s performance is emotionally convincing and Aladag elicits just the right notes from the supporting cast. The roller-coaster ups and downs in the desperate heroine’s life and her confrontations with an intolerant, tradition-bound family make for stirring drama.

A number of English-language indie films stood out as conventional works that succeed because they hit all the marks. Director Josh Appignanesi and screenwriter David Baddiel’s The Infidel, one of the new Tribeca Film acquisitions, is an often very amusing, high-concept film about an assimilated London Muslim (comic Omid Djalili), a true believer but far from a fanatic, who discovers he is Jewish by birth. Djalili, who suggests an ethnic Bob Hoskins, is a roly-poly riot as he struggles to keep the secret from his family while tentatively seeking insight into his Judaic roots by way of a gruff Jewish neighbor (Richard Schiff), an ex-pat divorced cabbie.

The hero’s dilemma evolves into a kind of non-gay, La Cage aux Folles-like masquerade, as his road to understanding requires him to try to pass as Jewish even as a Muslim extremist enters his family life. The film, whose surprise ending needed a better set-up, skillfully tiptoes around its touchy subject except when it plunges its toe into what some might consider anti-Semitic digs. But the controversy should only fuel interest, as should the great performances, neat story arc, and no shortage of laughs.

Writer/director/actor Ed Burns’ Nice Guy Johnny is a remarkably nice film that fully entertains and deserves a pick-up. It takes some not-so-nice but highly amusing turns by way of a macho, irresponsible playboy uncle (played by Burns) determined to convert his “nice guy” nephew Johnny. Matt Bush is perfect as the eponymous young hero, a 25-year-old late-night sports-radio DJ in California about to marry his longtime—but nagging—sweetheart after he returns from a short visit to New York. There, Burns’ Uncle Terry, perfectly blunt about his dissatisfaction with his nephew’s marital plans and polite behavior with women, sweeps him off to the Hamptons, determined to give the kid a good time and dissuade him from tying the knot. As uncle reveals himself to be more and more a cad, Johnny holds firm until he meets a young woman who may or may not change his plans.

Romantic dilemmas also energize the plot of IFC Films’ lovely Patricia Clarkson starrer, Cairo Time. As much a breathtakingly beautiful travelogue as subtle journey into loneliness and temptation, writer-director Ruba Nadda’s drama has Clarkson as an oh-so-proper diplomat’s wife awaiting her husband’s arrival in Cairo where they are to begin a vacation. New to the city, Clarkson’s character takes a Summertime-like detour when she meets her husband’s young Egyptian associate who becomes her official greeter and guide. With her spouse delayed in Gaza, Clarkson’s loneliness grows, as does her relationship with the guide. “Will they or won’t they?” becomes the prominent thread in a vibrant tapestry of Egyptian life. Clarkson’s un-showy interpretation of the gentle wife is quiet and considered, a stark counterpoint to the noise, aggressiveness and exoticism of her new surroundings.

Whether by virtue of story or style, several indies strayed from the conventional into the bizarre but nonetheless loom as possible pick-ups. Tribeca Film’s The Trotsky, which Tribeca delivered day-and-date to both its festival and VOD, is an oddball comedy set in upper-middle-class Montreal. The film follows a precocious (or is he disturbed?) high-school senior who is sure he is the incarnation of Leon Trotsky. Jay Baruchel miraculously makes this all believable (or at least highly amusing) in his role as the obsessed, rich Jewish kid who rouses family, classmates, faculty and city officials to take action on behalf of the working classes. Familiar names in the cast, including Genevieve Bujold, Colm Feore, Michael Murphy and Saul Rubinek, help make this weird and original trip into political comedy a worthy ride. Clever visual references to Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin give the film some buff and Commie cred.

Even more bizarre is Spork, a gay spin on High School Musical with some narrative jolts by way of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Napoleon Dynamite. The film, which also suggests what David Lynch might have done to a teen musical, marks a pretty impressive debut for writer/filmmaker J.B. Ghuman, Jr. His kinky creation takes us into the super-tacky world of teenage Spork, a hermaphrodite from a white-trash trailer park who attends a high school terrorized by a bitchy blond clique. The film’s flashy comic-book look, dazzling visual palette, and rap ’n’ roll score dovetail perfectly with the fall and rise of its oddball hero/heroine. Spork’s friendship with Tootsie Roll, a spunky African-American neighbor and fellow student who has a gift for break-dancing, is Spork’s salvation. Who says high school sucks?



And then there were the oddities that were no more than odd. The erotically charged but otherwise empty Brilliantlove, about two aimless young people drunk and sweaty in love in their shabby digs in the hot British countryside, reminded that, outside the porn genre, characters to care about matter more than a bonanza of nudity and love-making.

Meet Monica Velour, about the provocative encounter of a totally nerdy teen and a strip-club pole dancer way past her prime, was another indie whose characters were sleep-inducing. The film wastes the talents of Kim Cattrall, who boldly steps into Monica’s ex-porn star/ex-prostitute/pole dancer’s shoes, and Brian Dennehy, who usually knows a good indie role when he sees it. Dustin Ingram as the jerky, horny teen is a blatant rip-off of Napoleon Dynamite, but more depressing than charming. Audiences are forced to follow him on a journey in his hot dog truck to Indiana where he searches for and finds Monica, his amorous obsession. He may lose his virginity, but not before audiences lose patience.

Going from teens to “tweeners,” several other American indies fared better but missed the bull’s-eye. Every Day is a somewhat autobiographical story about the problems that arise when a TV writer’s ailing father-in-law moves in and a seductive colleague at work threatens marital fidelity. Other crises, familiar to TV viewers, involve the hero’s young gay son and the writer’s distracted wife. Happily, Eddie Izzard as an amusingly driven TV producer enlivens things. Others in the impressive cast, including Ezra Miller (City Island), Liev Schreiber, and Helen Hunt help writer/director/producer Richard Levine make a respectable feature film debut.

Beware the Gonzo delivers the hugely gifted Miller in top form as a rebel high-school journalist who starts his own underground broadsheet after being marginalized from the school’s official newspaper and the student and faculty toadies behind it. In another feature directing debut, writer-director Bryan Goluboff has a great concept and platform here and gets a real boost from his young star (although others in the supporting cast register as too shrill or clichéd). But in a terrible irony, this film about the importance of truth sends a muddled message about integrity.

Documentaries continued to be TFF’s strong suit. Among the strongest winners were IFC’s wonderful Joan Rivers—A Piece of Work; Vidal Sassoon The Movie, about the hugely gifted and charismatic Sassoon’s remarkable journey from London orphanage to world fame and extraordinary wealth as the famous hair-care mogul and style-maker; and Chuck Workman’s remarkably rich Visionaries, a deeply researched and inclusive survey of influential avant-garde and underground filmmakers and their works from decades past. Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Robert Downey, Norman Mailer, Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol are just a few of the dozens of artists represented in this nostalgic trip back into alternate cinema history.

A few docs excelled but at the same time disappointed. The sleek The Woodmans provides a fascinating look at a seventy-something married couple, George and Betty Woodman, who have both thrived to varying degrees as artists. Their children, too, entered the art world, but the most gifted, the photographer Francesca, committed suicide at age 22. Giving the doc an incompleteness, the filmmaker leaves this shocking detail almost completely unexplored, either unable or uninterested in interviewing Francesca’s significant others—a live-in boyfriend, her psychiatrists or her teachers at Rhode Island School of Design.

A sure bet for TV (and discussion) is Budrus, about the Palestinian village Budrus that brought together otherwise disputing factions and resorted to non-violent means in a united front to push back Israeli troops who insisted upon building a “security fence” in their territory. The film’s pacifist and pro-Palestinian messages are strong, but the film is technically weak.

Two foreign docs registered so impressively that they bode well for theatrical pick-ups. From Iceland came Featured Cocaine, not merely a fascinating look into the little-explored world of falcon collecting and smuggling, but an insight into just how the world’s most famous falcon aficionado—Osama Bin Laden—might be caught.

Denmark was nobly represented by Into Eternity, perhaps TFF’s most artfully made documentary. The film is a journey into a giant Finnish facility of vast tunnels built deep in the far north of the country that are designed to last 100,000 years and serve as a storage facility for radioactive waste. But doubts abound as to whether this huge effort will work. An appropriately chilly and subtle music track adds to the effect of arty horror. Like Into Deep Silence, the doc about austere and remote monastery life, Into Eternity lingers like a strange dream.

On the foreign front, Dev Benegal’s Road, Movie, another Tribeca Film, was among the most charming entries. A celebration of both the open road (here a journey across dusty India) and the road-trip movie genre, the film centers on a young hair-oil salesman driving his uncle’s rickety Chevy truck to a new owner and amasses the usual road-movie suspects: the precocious kid, the attractive female, the old eccentric, etc. Benegal makes what could have been familiar material seem fresh and earnest.

Magnolia’s moody Ondine, steeped in the local color of a picturesque Cork County seaside, impressed as a way for Colin Farrell to get to know up-and-coming actor Alicja Bachleda better (the two now have a child) and allow writer director Neil Jordan to work closer to home. Overwrought and farfetched, until a slapdash ending abruptly brings it back to earth, the film tells the fanciful tale of a rugged local fisherman who believes he has caught a mermaid-like creature in his net.

Much more successful (especially if you are familiar with the many French personalities and pop-culture references like Boris Vian, Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg himself), the highly original bio-musical, Gainsbourg, Je t’Aime…Moi Non Plus follows the late eponymous singer’s rise to fame and eventual decline. A real treat for buffs is the appearance of New Wave master Claude Chabrol, perfectly cast as the music publisher who dares to publish Gainsbourg’s controversial material, including his and companion Jane Birkin’s signature “Je t’Aime…Moi Non Plus.”

On the genre front, the surprisingly entertaining and well-made low-budget crime thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed bodes a promising career for debuting feature writer-director J Blakeson. Minimal in all senses except its suspense and surprise quotients, the film has two Brit lowlifes kidnapping the twenty-something daughter of a wealthy businessman. All goes well at first, thanks to the perps’ attention to detail. Their prey is tightly bound and holed up in a hidden room and the money is waiting to be collected. But twists occur and stuff happens, no thanks to human frailty of the psychological kind. Anchor Bay plans an August release in theatres.

Again, the fest’s worst film was its own trailer, part of the package that precedes each show. On a happier front, Martin Scorsese stars in a delightful and funny spot (first seen on TV a few years ago) to promote the American Express card, and a montage of wildly polarized film fans again came from Heineken. But the witless trailer for the festival—a lengthy setup for a tepid punch line involving moving men and a lot of bubble wrap—was the latest in a long line of deadly duds, in spite of a cameo by fest co-founder Robert De Niro.

TFF manages the difficult stuff well, so why not this? Maybe for 2011, the festival will maneuver “any which way” to finally get a watchable trailer up on the screen.
But first, it needs to solve its identity problem: Do we continue to be loud, glam and brand-crazy for a consumerist film-loving public, or do we get more serious with more cutting-edge, original films that might populate a market for the industry? Cannes gets it right, but it took decades.