2013 Tribeca Film Festival Introduction

The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival took place between April 17 and April 28 all across New York City theaters. Created in response to the 9/11 Attacks by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2002, the festival has gone on to garner worldwide fame as one of the most celebrated festivals in the world.

The 12^th Annual Tribeca Film Festival had over 450,000 attendees to the numerous screenings, panels, events and more all throughout the almost 2 week period. With over 89 feature films and 60 short films from more than 35 countries providing entertainment, the festival housed more than 117,000 people in their panels and screenings.

What proved to be remarkable about this year’s events was the fact that more people took advantage of the festival’s online festival (also known as the Tribeca Online Festival, or TOF), which gave people free screening s of select films and filmmaker panels. There was even an online contest hosted by Vine called the #6SECFILMs Vine Competition, where people could make vines and have the chance to enter them in the Tribeca contest and they received 415 entries.

Co-founder Jane Rosenthal stated, “Experiencing the films and events with our audiences over the past 12 days has been incredible. It is so rewarding to watch their reactions and hear them engage with our filmmakers at the question and answers after the screenings. It proves there is no better audience than New Yorkers.”

37 countries were represented including Sweden, South Africa, South Korea, Australia, Italy and more. There were 1395 works made from New York City students as part of the Youth Screening Series.

Tribeca, overall, is a festival in which to celebrate the arts. There were numerous events held at Tribeca, which ranged all over from networking events to talks with the filmmakers to panels and more. Some are included below:

Made in New York: a networking event for young filmmakers in the city to meet professionals already in the business.

Tribeca Talks Industry: Look Who’s Talking: A event where filmmakers tell the audience how they got their films made and what steps they took to make it the best they could.

Tribeca Talks Industry: Big Data and the Movies: Professionals talk about how social media and new forms of technology have led to greater forms of communication.

Putting the “I” in “Film:” Directors and writers unite to speak about their troubles trying to put another person’s work and including their voice into one masterpiece.

Whose Credit is it Anyway: A talk about how documentaries should be credited and how to allow the writer into a world of acknowledgement.

There were also talks where filmmakers, like directors for instance, were able to talk about their works with other filmmakers, like the actors they worked with. Some include Jay Roach and Ben Stiller, Clint Eastwood and Darren Aronofsky, and more. There were even talks held after the movie as part of the Tribeca Talks: After the Movie events. Whoopi Golderg joined in on her directing debut, I’ve Got Something to Tell You, as Matthew Cooke joined his How to Make Money Selling Drugs and And the Band Played On was represented by Matthew Modine and Ron Nyswaner.

There were also many events for young filmmakers to join in and possibly have their own work shown. Some included the Tribeca Youth Screening Series in which young filmmakers’ works were shown, as well as a Tribeca Teaches 2013, where students’ work gets shown as well. Our City My Story allowed for people to make their own short films to be shown.

Stay tuned as more information will be added about the festival. Check out the festival’s YouTube for behind the scenes videos as well as coverage of the festival’s events.