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This year, the annual Tribeca Film Festival, which began as a very location-specific event to help rejuvenate the Tribeca neighborhood in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, won't be screening just in Manhattan.
A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival's parent company Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen films available on TV via video-on-demand (VOD).
A "virtual festival" will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for 5,000 customers willing to shell out $45. Among the offerings are Edward Burns' Nice Guy Johnny, the hermaphrodite comedy Spork and The Sentimental Engine Driver.
The Sundance Film Festival and the South By Southwest Film Festival have both tried similar initiatives, though Tribeca's foray is the boldest yet.
The very nature of the film festival is changing, festival organizers say.
"The old days, you'd bring a film to a festival, you'd try to get a buzz going that would help a buyer get interested, and you'd hopefully take the film out several months later," says Geoff Gilmore, the chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises and the former director of Sundance. "It doesn't work that way anymore."
Many of the 85 feature films at Tribeca will still arrive with that mission: looking for distribution. But some films are increasingly viewing that possibility as quixotic in an industry where independent film and documentary distributors are rapidly disappearing.
"I found that whatever the festival, you come out of it with this amazing wave of enthusiasm and publicity and the rest of it, and then it disappears," says British director Mat Whitecross, who first came to Tribeca as co-director of 2006's The Road to Guantanamo.
Seven of the 10 movies released by Tribeca Film will be screened day-and-date, which means that at the same time moviegoers are flocking to a New York theater, TV viewers across the country will be able to watch on VOD.
Deals with Comcast, Verizon FiOS and Cablevision helped make that possible. Even the movies that do secure distribution at film festivals typically aren't released for months, even years. By shrinking that window, Tribeca Film hopes to capitalize on buzz from the festival and support from festival sponsors.
"It's certainly a way of creating a new opportunity," said Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded Tribeca with Robert De Niro and her husband, entrepreneur Craig Hatkoff.
It's a strategy that puts a lot of hope in VOD and the Internet as new avenues for finding audiences. But both methods have a checkered track record in independent film.
In January, the Sundance festival offered five movies (including the eventual Oscar documentary winner The Cove) for rent on YouTube. The experiment, at $3.99 per rental, earned a disappointing $10,709.16, a meager sum that suggested new media might not be as promising for indie film as some predicted.
The festival begins Wednesday with the 3-D premiere of Shrek Forever After.
Questions:
1. What is new for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival?
2. What makes it a “virtual festival”?
3. How many movies are looking for distribution at the festival?
Answers:
1. A new distribution company will make a dozen films available on TV via video-on-demand (VOD).
2. The festival will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for 5,000 customers willing to shell out $45.
3. 85 feature films.
（中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Helen 編輯）
About the broadcaster:
Nelly Min is an editor at China Daily with more than 10 years of experience as a newspaper editor and photographer. She has worked at major newspapers in the U.S., including the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit Free Press. She is fluent in Korean and has a 2-year-old son.
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