The Tribeca Film Festival presented its awards Saturday night in Lower Manhattan, with Li Shaohong's banned Chinese film "Stolen Life" awarded the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at TFF 2005.

Péter Forgács's "El Perro Negro: Stories from the Spanish Civil War” won the prize for best documentary feature.

The complete list of winners follows:

» Continue reading "Tribeca Winners"

The winners of the Tribeca All Access Connects program, fostering relationships between U.S. filmmakers of color and members of the film business, were announced Thursday. During the party at the Tribeca Grand, Dennis Lee won the narrative section script prize ($10,000) for "The Life & Times of H.J. Hermin". The documentary prize ($10,000) went to Usama Alshaibi's proposal for "Nice Bombs". Mario de la Vega" wont the screenplay section award ($5,000) for the script, "The Undeniable Charm of Sloppy Unruh".

» Continue reading "TAA Winners: Lee, Alshaibi, and de la Vega"

[Tribeca daily dispatch by Eugene Hernandez, photos by Brian Brooks.]

Fourth festival in three years; first one was planned in 120 days; 1 million people at the first three fests including 80% attending free events; $125 million in economic activity for Lower Manhattan. These are just some of the basic facts about the Tribeca Film Festival that were reiterated at the annual kick-off press conference Thursday, this year held at the Borough of Manhattan City College.

But, why did it take so long for New York to get a film festival like this, asked one uninformed journalist. While New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, embarking on a re-election campaign, humorously quipped that he's only been Mayor for less than four years so he couldn't do more, TFF co-founder Jane Rosenthal went out of her way to give credit to the city's prestigious New York Film Festival. "We have to give a nod to Lincoln Center," Rosenthal said, "That is the grandfather festival here in New York City. We'd like to do more things with the New York Film Festival -- we can all co-exist. We do nod to that festival."

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[Tribeca daily dispatch by Eugene Hernandez]

Talk with just about anyone in the New York film community and you're bound to hear the same song, "I am overwhelmed by Tribeca." I've even said the same thing many times in the past few days. A festival with countless new films, many with sales reps and/or publicists hyping the movies, is frankly a bit overwhelming. And this year, the event began on the same day that the Cannes Film Festival announced its lineup. Yet, like it or not, while many in the film industry continue to complain that Tribeca doesn't have much to offer in the way of acquisitions prospects, many companies are using the festivals as a way to launch their films at a festival that has proven itself to draw large, supportive crowds that embrace an array of films.

» Continue reading "Daunted By Tribeca"