Urban, yeah. But urbane? Ha!
The Tribeca Film Festival is uneven and messy, not to mention hip, political and increasingly popular.

By Nancy Ramsey
Special to The Times

May 2, 2005

NEW YORK — It's hard not to love the Tribeca Film Festival. It's democratic, it's egalitarian, it's for the public. Robert De Niro always makes an appearance. And there are more bouncers and hip young black-T-shirted volunteers running around than snooty art-house cinephiles. And in May 2002, its first year, the festival brought people in droves back to a lower Manhattan devastated by 9/11.

It also borders on disorganized, the quality of the films is uneven, they don't always start on time, and uptown programmers and critics have been looking down their noses at the festival as if it were the loud arriviste uncle clamoring for a seat at the head table.

But that's democracy. And, hey, this is New York.

The festival, which kicked off April 19 with a red-carpet screening of Sydney Pollack's "The Interpreter," wrapped up this weekend after screening 250 feature films, shorts and documentaries from 45 countries. 

"If we are a festival that started because of an act of war, we are by nature a political festival," says event co-founder Jane Rosenthal, referring to 9/11. "The theme that seems to be coming from Tribeca are the urban truths, the urban stories, whether it's Brazil or New York or Italy."

The organizers "aren't afraid of glamour," said Joe Lovett, a New York-based documentary filmmaker, whose film "Gay Sex in the 70s," an engaging look back at the peak of gay sexual liberation in New York, was among those screened. "But they also have gritty New York films and thoughtful documentaries."

Name a political hot spot, and you'd find a documentary to take you there. Out of North Korea came "A State of Mind," which followed two schoolgirls as they prepared for the athletic extravaganza known as Mass Games. "Little Peace of Mine" followed a 12-year-old boy founding a peace movement of Israeli and Palestinian children, while "The Devil's Miner" journeyed with 14-year-old Basilio deep into a silver mine in Bolivia.

Spinning the globe some more, "Coca, the Dove from Chechnya" centered on a mother documenting war's atrocities. "Prostitution Behind the Veil" featured two mothers supporting themselves as sex workers in Iran. "A Flood in Baath Country" used a faultily constructed dam as a metaphor for Syria's attempts at modernization. And "En Route to Baghdad" traveled to Mozambique, Cambodia and East Timor, paying tribute to U.N. Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, killed in a car bomb in Baghdad in 2003.

"The first screening was amazing," said Simone Duarte, a Brazilian journalist who lives in New York, who directed "En Route." "I was scared people wouldn't come to see this type of film. But it started at 10:15 and people were asking questions until midnight, about how Americans see the U.N, if the U.N. is important or not. They had to expel us from the theater because another film was coming in."

In its first two years, "Tribeca looked like a festival and felt like a festival. Like Sundance and Toronto, people were scurrying around from theater to theater with their noses in guidebooks," said Joe Angio, the editor in chief of "Time Out New York," whose affectionate portrait of filmmaker-musician-novelist Melvin Van Peebles, "How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company and Enjoy It," screened at Tribeca. "But the programming was lacking. Last year I felt there was a significant uptick. You look at the roster, there are good films. Wong Kar-Wai, a world-class director, has chosen to do his North American premiere here." The director's "2046" will open in Los Angeles in August. 

Other highlights during the festival included: David LaChapelle's "Rize," about krumping teenagers from South Los Angeles; "Through the Fire," about high school basketball star Sebastian Telfair; and "Great New Wonderful," a feature by Danny Leiner ("Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle"), which examined New Yorkers` lives changed by 9/11; "Mad Hot Ballroom," about dancing kids from New York City; and "Pelican Man," a movie from Finland about a pelican that turns into a man.

Aside from the international documentary fare and features by Costa-Gavras ("The Axe") and Goran Paskalijevic ("Midwinter Night's Dream"), plus a bizarre and critically acclaimed Russian film called "4" and films from both coasts (not to mention lots of films about the business of show business), Tribeca clearly observed a few unwritten rules of festivals.

For instance, sex sells. "I Am A Sex Addict" was the latest addition to the recent video-diary-as-documentary category. It is about Caveh Zahedi, an endearingly nebbishy guy whose addiction to prostitutes — surprise! — ruined two marriages.

Sally Potter's "Yes" paired a London housewife with a Lebanese cook for some hot sex (discreetly off camera), while the camera zoomed in for Michael Winterbottom's steamy "9 Songs."

Any film festival worth its salt also features a bourgeois French family who goes on vacation and all hell breaks loose. In "Cote d'Azur," the Biancheris visit the south of France. Daughter goes off with biker boyfriend. Son may or may not be gay. Ditto Dad. Mom's having an affair. Audiences laugh.

There is the tried and true subject of the dysfunctional family. Arthur Allan Seidelman's "The Sisters" is based loosely on Chekhov's play and features three sisters from Charleston, S.C., who, when they do say what they're really thinking, are less than charitable.

And then there's the "Don't try this at home" category: "Modify," by two first-time filmmakers from Malibu and Santa Barbara who interviewed people who had modified, some might say mutilated, their bodies, in places that aren't mentionable in polite company.

But, hey, this is New York, isn't it?

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