How to Keep Up With the Tribeca Film Festival!

Want the latest in Festival news, ticket availability, celebrity sightings, and more? Click here to learn how to get Tribeca on-the-go, whether it's via your RSS feed, Twitter, Facebook, cell phone, or this week's issue of Time Out New York! 
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Surf: Festival News Roundup 3

Your Monday briefing of '09 Festival films making waves on the Internet. In this round: The Exploding Girl, The Burning Season, Seven Minutes in Heaven, The Girlfriend Experience,The Eclipse, and Outrage. Plus: New York Magazine's favorite Festival films! 
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The Tribecca started with a simple goal: to bring a little life back to the streets of Tribecca a fashionable part of Manhattan, New York. That seemed easier said than done in late 2001, when co-founders Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff agreed to put their long-percolating Tribecca Film Festival idea into action. Not only had the tragedy of September 11 cast a shadow over the payment, but the resulting relocation of businesses and their employees formt he area, as well as residents who's lost their homes int he neighborhood, meant dark days for local merchants. Restaurants and shops were closing their doors daily.
"At the time, the world didn't need another film festival, but Tribeca did - we needed to get people downtown," says Rosenthal, who cites the showcasing of films as an almost secondary desires in those early days. "It was about bringing the community back outside, back together."

"Businesses were suffereing, the neiborhood was suffering. What we were thinking about was, we must help." 
John Hayes, American Express Chief Marketing Officer

  In the heart of that community was American Express and its employees, some 4,000 of whom had been forced to leave their downtown offices after the attacks and were nowworking in auxiliary spaces around the tri-state area.
  " Busineses were suffering, the neighborhood was suffering. What we were thinking about was. we must held," recalls John Hayes, Amex's Chief Marketing Officer. The compnay had already announced that it would move its headquarters back to lower Manhattan, "Jane, Bob and Craig really wanted to bring the energy back, the community back. We shared their vision, Hayes says. " We knew that the festival had the potential to be extremely powerful. Our goals were to drive business to merchants who were hurting, give platforms for filmmakers to tell their stories broadly, and create amazing experiences for our Cardmembers who are passionate about film.
  As it turned out, a lot of others brought into the visions, too. Attendees on the inaugral fest's opening day included former President Bill Clinnton and former South African president Nelson Mandela, in addition to film world luminaries, , such as Marin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. As projectors rolled, it seemed the whole world was on its way downtown, including filmmakers, actors and politicos from around the globe, and perhaps most importantly, those 4,000 American Express employees and scores of New Yorkers from around the city.
   Actor Hugh Grant, star of the De Niro/Rosenthal-produced About a Boy, which premiered at the Festival, predicted it is his own charming way at the opening dat press conference, saying that TFF'02 would be a "shot of vitamin B-12 in the buttocks" of Manhattan. He was right: That first year, TFF infised $10.5 million into the borough's economically stilted lower reaches. Since its launch, the Tribeca Film Festival has grown exponentially, and has screened more than 1,100 films from at least 80 countries and attracted more than 2 million attendees, all while generating more than $530 million in economic activity for the city of New York.
  American Express, the fest's first sponsor, has been a part of the expansion year after year and is focused on supporting filmmaking while providing special experiences for Cardmembers, including advance ticketsales, film talks and special screenings, and connecting filmgoers with local restauranteurs and shopkeepers through Cardmember offers. (Other TFF sponsors include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, AMCtv, Apple, Bloomberg, Brookfield Properties, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Delta Airlines, DIRCTTV, Heineken, iShares, NBC 4 New York, RR Donnelly, Snapple, The New York Times, Telemundo 47 and Vanity Fair). Also helping to drive business downtown are the numerous free and family-friendly events like the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival and the Tribeca Drive-In.
   "We're happy when this time of year comes around", says Drew Nieporent, owner of local favorites like Nobu and the Tribeca Grill. "What they have built here is just totally positive, good-feeling event."
  Contribitions from neighbors and friends have been paramount to the festival's tone and success. Contemporary artist Stephen Hancock has donated a painting every year since the festival's inception. The works, presented to award winning filmmakers, are the Tribeca equivalent of shiny statuettes, and in many people's opinions are more meaningful than the coverted cash prizes. " I 've heard from many film makers a year or more after winning their prize, " Hancock says. " They realize that an actual community has recognised their efforts, thanking them for participating and making their art."
  And then there is the life-changing award of being seen,which the festival excels at offereing to participants. " We got our first paid job as a result of the exposure at Tribeca," says John Dowdle, who with his brother Drew premiered their feature The Ploughkeepsie Tapes, as upstate New York-based "faux doc" about a serial killer. at TFF'07. The flick was purchased by MGM two weeks later and before the L.A. 0 based team headed home from the festival, they'd been approached to write 2008's Quarantine, which John also directer. The brothers return in 2009 with Transcendent Man, a documentary they produced about Ray Kurzwell, inventor and the bestselling author of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transend Biology.
  Given the economic horizon this year, the festival may bear fewer such deals than they have in the past. "the world had changed," Rosenthal says, "There are fewer distribution companies, and it will be harder to have that frenzy."
    Of course, inside the theater, sitting shoulder to-shoulder with fellow filmlovers, the realities outside are easier to forget. "We like to think we're doing our part to install confidence, hope and inspiration in individuals, especially in these tough times, "
Rosenthal says. 
Movies, take us away!