Rising From 9/11 Ashes, Tribeca Film Fest Is on a Mission

Jane Rosenthal is multitasking. She’s sending an e-mail while saying, “I’m trying to do this in 120 days without having a nervous breakdown.”

“This” is the Tribeca Film Festival, which has emerged fully formed from the ashes of the World Trade Center disaster. In those four months, producer Rosenthal and partner Robert De Niro organized a three-ring circus that has generated a lot of buzz here. Starting today and running through Sunday, it features, among other things, 150 films, more than a dozen panel discussions and an outdoor rock and comedy concert.

Asked recently if all of this isn’t a bit nuts, Rosenthal, who is also in the middle of production with De Niro (on “Analyze That”) and has two young children, says, “I thought it was nuts that two planes could fly into the trade center.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the Tribeca Film Festival’s guiding principle: to memorialize what happened on Sept. 11 and to revitalize lower Manhattan. Everything else--the logistics, the time and financial constraints--is swept before it.

The Tribeca Film Center, which houses Rosenthal and De Niro’s company, Tribeca Productions, was perilously close to the trade center disaster. In the ensuing weeks and months, New York City police and firemen, the National Guard, the Red Cross and Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel were a regular feature of life there, not to mention checkpoints, interrupted phone and transit service, and smoke and ashes from the buildings’ fires and collapse.

Though much of the neighborhood has been put back together, 9/11 lives on in the people who live and work in TriBeCa--an abbreviation for the triangle below Canal Street. It may explain the slightly messianic quality that Rosenthal brings to the enterprise.

“I feel like we’re trying to do something for the community,” she says emphatically, perched on the edge of a couch and looking a bit wan. “We’re not doctors or firemen or crane operators. We’re filmmakers.”

Perhaps because of media interest in the festival, Rosenthal and De Niro were able to attract some major studio films. Universal Pictures’ “About a Boy,” starring Hugh Grant, opens the festival (De Niro was one of the film’s five producers), and 20th Century Fox’s “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones” closes it (an enormous coup, courtesy of director George Lucas). In between are Warner Bros.’ “Insomnia,” with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” with Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd.

The idea of holding an independent film festival in TriBeCa had occurred to De Niro and Rosenthal before; the pair had been talking about it off and on for the past 10 years, but other projects got in the way. There were no more excuses after Sept. 11. This sense of urgency also explains how they managed to secure the cooperation of so many big names so quickly (although it’s also true that Rosenthal and De Niro have friends in high places).

Rosenthal says they picked early May in part because it didn’t conflict with any of the other major festivals--although it ends only three days before the Cannes Film Festival begins. Rosenthal insists that this does not concern her. According to Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate, it shouldn’t.

“Cannes is an international market heavily influenced by European film,” he says. “Tribeca is a great coming-together of the indie film community in the U.S. With or without Sept. 11 this would be a great idea.”

Venues for the films are makeshift in time-honored festival fashion. They include not only the local performing arts center and nearby screening rooms but also auditoriums at Pace University and Stuyvesant High School, where students had to flee uptown after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rosenthal also tried to establish an outdoor screening venue. When that didn’t work out for financial reasons, they came up with a plan for a rock and comedy concert in Battery Park.

Even with the latest “Star Wars” episode and other major summer films, will New Yorkers pay attention? No festival, no matter how attractive, can take over New York the same way Park City, Utah (home to Sundance), Toronto and Cannes are co-opted by their festivals. But TriBeCa is a relatively small neighborhood of warehouses, lofts, restaurants, boutiques, art galleries and cobblestone streets snug by the Hudson River.

In a way it brings New York down to a manageable size and may give the festival a physical focus. It’s also where a number of indie production companies and studios are headquartered or have offices.

The Tribeca festival is seen as fertile ground to show some upcoming smaller releases. Miramax is here with “The Importance of Being Earnest”; Sony Pictures Classics has “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” and “Happy Times”; Lions Gate, “Lovely and Amazing”; ThinkFilm, “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys”; First Look, “Elling” and “A Song for Martin”; Artisan, “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.” Many of these films have screened at other festivals, and a number of them are opening soon.

There is also a slew of films competing that don’t have distribution, including 15 feature films, 11 documentaries and 36 shorts. The festival’s programmer is Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures and a veteran of the indie scene. He and his colleagues culled through some 1,400 films to arrive at a slate. His mandate, he says, was fairly simple.

“I think a lot of festivals froth at the mouth at getting a world premiere,” he says. “We’re just looking for good films. We’ve got films from Iran, Korea, all over the world, but we’re not being snobby. They’re not inaccessible.”

In fact, they’re intended to be seen--and bought. Rosenthal says that De Niro insisted there be competitions and prizes, with the idea that winners might get distribution. He apparently envisions the festival as a market as well as a showcase.

ThinkFilm President Mark Urman thinks this is not out of the question. “If this takes hold, you will find next year people will time unveiling a movie here,” he says. “The buyers will be here because of their proximity to it. [Artisan CEO] Amir Malin and [Miramax chief] Harvey Weinstein only have to walk a few blocks.”

Rosenthal and De Niro want to make the festival an annual affair; American Express, the festival’s sponsor, has a three-year commitment to support it. On the other hand, Rosenthal is not prepared to talk about expanding from five days to a week or 10 days, as is typical for the other major festivals.

And what will the Tribeca Film Festival mean in 10 years, when the festival will have evolved into a showcase for studio films or indie films or both? Won’t it be just another festival?

“There were thousands killed at the trade center,” Rosenthal says soberly. “This will serve as a reminder.”