Tribeca Film Festival 2015
Artists, innovators and film enthusiasts all gather for NYC’s 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival.
Daniel Arsham ‘Future Relic 03’ Photos by James Law
The tenth annual Tribeca Film festival presented by AT&T took off last Thursday in the Tribeca district of Manhattan in New York City.
The film festival was founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Graign Hatkoff with the aim of celebrating New York City as a major filmmaking center.
Tribeca runs from the 16th April until the 25th April with an overwhelming compellation of events, talks, screenings, exhibitions and discussions guaranteed to satisfy all film fanatics.
This year’s film line-up represents a significant landmark in Tribeca’s fourteen year history with 40 of the 119 feature-length films directed by women and even more significant for Tribeca, 11 of those 40 women are from New York City. This is an increasingly relevant subject, which references the surge in female filmmaking over the recent years. (see also, Rooms 17 Presents: A female Perspective in Film)
Staying with the feminism theme, documentary ‘Code: Debugging the Gender Gap’ will feature in the film festival. Code is a documentary exposing the shortage of American female and minority software engineers and explores the reasons for this gender gap. Code raises the question: What would society gain from having more women and minorities code?
One of the biggest names to feature in this year’s line-up is a talk by Courtney Love who discusses the impact of watching the documentary movie about her late husband Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, ‘Montage of Heck’. Love discusses the personal effects this film has had on her views about her late husband’s suicide, which is compiled of journals, photography, songs, recordings and artwork from the 90’s rock icon.
Another highlight comes from the Star Wars mastermind himself, George Lucas who candidly talks about the newly released trailer for the latest edition in the Star Wars franchise; ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ The creator discusses informally as part of this year’s Tribeca Talks Series.
Deviating from the Hollywood blockbusters, Tribeca exposes audiences to the complex world of abstract filmmakers like Daniel Arsham, who has built his career combining art, performance, architecture and film in his short ‘Future Relic 03.’ ‘Future Relic’ is a series of shorts with the concept depicting a future civilization at various points before and after a major ecological change on Earth. In his latest project ‘Future Relic 04,’ Arsham shoots his film inside a space shuttle set. Arsham’s film will premiere as part of the shorts program entitled ‘Gallery Opening’ at the Tribeca Film festival.
There will also be the Artists Award Gallery Exhibition, which showcases the works of world-renowned artists who create and donate works to be presented to the Tribeca Film festival’s award winners.
Tribeca promises to be the platform of future film making and viewing, exploring, educating and exposing audiences to the next big thing to come out in cinema in the all inspiring backdrop of NYC. More importantly, you don’t need a special VIP invitation, you just need to be available and in New York to purchase your reasonable festival pass and begin exploring all that the festival has to offer.
Tribeca Film Festival 2015 | Image taken from the Tribeca Film Festival website