The Tribeca Film Festival arrives in the East Village

The Village East on Second Avenue and 12th Street is serving as a venue for the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, which starts today and runs through May 5.

As such, the theater is only screening films from the Festival. Village East will return to its usual programming on May 7.

In the meantime, you can always check out the Anthology Film Archives on Second Street and Second Avenue or the Metrograph down on Ludlow or the Quad Cinema on 13th Street... not to mention the Film Forum, IFC Center, the Angelika Film Center or Cinema Village.

Previously on OMG EV Grieve:
The fellow who was terrorized by old people during the Tribeca Film Festival

It always seems so much more glamorous on TV

Doesn't it always though? Off the red carpet and away from the paparazzi ... you don't see the dingy entrance to usher the talent into the Loews Village 7 on Third Avenue or the sidewalk shed protecting people from a now-demolished Nevada Smith's or smell the urine coming up from the nooks and crannies of the darkened sidewalk...

In line at the Tribeca Film Festival

Third Avenue near 11th Street.

Nevada Smith's expecting huge crowds today for Blackpool-Newcastle United

Oh! It's the Tribeca Film Festival at the AMC Loews Village 7... (Can't wait for the TFF horror stories!)

Second Avenue, 7:39 p.m., April 23

Free popcorn at 10th Street...

The fellow who was terrorized by old people during the Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival ended Sunday...





Anyway, I was sitting at the Grassroots the other day. And this young fellow started talking to his drinking partner about how much he hated the Tribeca Film Festival. Specifically because he lived on Third Avenue near the Loews Village VII where some of the films were showing. He complained about sidewalk congestion. People screaming for cabs at night. Idiots paying no mind to their surroundings while texting/talking. Couples arguing about whether his/her spouse remembered to bring the tickets. That kind of thing.

Mmm-huh.

The perceptive drinking partner asked how this was different from any other Thursday/weekend night.

"These people were old."

Possibly unrelated! As Daily Intel reported, "500 New York Police Department barricades were used throughout the Festival."

Did anyone else hear any TFF horror stories?

NYC "remains a hotbed for con artists (whether small-time hustlers or real estate developers) and more importantly, fresh ideas"

Noelia Santos caught "Blank City" Saturday night at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's how Santos describes the documentary by Celine Danhier for MovieMaker Magazine: "It is an enjoyable chronicle of the giddy, nihilistic moviemaking style that emerged alongside the No Wave music scene of late 1970s/early 1980s in New York."

Here's more from the article by Santos:

Some of the best quotes she gets come from today’s well-known indie actors and directors who emerged from or alongside the downtown New York art scene of the late '70s-early ‘80s . . . like Jim Jarmusch, whose early films like 'Permanent Vacation' and 'Stranger Than Paradise' featured his friends hanging out in their run-down apartments and walking the streets of the then-dilapidated Lower East Side. Instead of lamenting the co-option of downtown DIY culture into mainstream condo living, he notes that 'New York was always about trade, commerce and thievery' — and that it remains a hotbed for con artists (whether small-time hustlers or real estate developers) and more importantly, fresh ideas.

In talking with several of these moviemakers afterwards, it seemed the freshness still hasn’t worn off. Michael Oblowitz (1983’s King Blank) is still making movies. Nick Zedd is now painting and getting into fashion design. But some, like James Chance, are probably simply inspiring others to be themselves.

"Variety" -- an NYC time capsule

The 1984 drama "Variety" plays tomorrow night at 5 during the Tribeca Film Festival. According to the Program Notes: "In Bette Gordon's pioneering indie film about voyeurism from a female perspective, a young woman (played by Sandy McLeod) works as a ticket taker in a porn theater, and her curiosity leads her to shadow a male patron."

"'Variety' features an unparalleled collaborative team of downtown artists and performers, including composer John Lurie, cinematographer Tom DiCillo, writer Kathy Acker, photographer Nan Goldin, and actors Spalding Gray and Luis Guzmán. In retrospect, 'Variety' also represents a time capsule of New York City, filmed at bygone landmarks like the Variety Theatre, Fulton Fish Market, and Yankee Stadium, as well as an edgier incarnation of Times Square."

No advance tickets are left for the screening at the SVA Theater on West 23rd Street. But you can go for the rush tickets an hour in advance of the screening ...

The Villager has a feature on the film in this week's issue.

Coming soon to the Tribeca Film Festival

Two documentaries worth noting (among others) ...

Here's how "Blank City" is described in the Tribeca Film Festival program by Cara Cusumano:

New York City in the late 1970s. Underground filmmakers collaborated with experimental musicians and vanguard performance artists, all on a shoestring budget, to create the most daring work of their generation. In stark contrast to the poverty and crime that seemed rampant in the economically struggling city, a community of aggressive, confrontational, vibrant artists flourished: hole-in-the-wall screening rooms abounded, manifestos circulated, and Jim Jarmusch, Nick Zedd, and Amos Poe debuted early works to an audience of their peers. These short-lived but profoundly influential movements dubbed themselves "No Wave Cinema" and "Cinema of Transgression."

Director Celine Danhier brings energy and style to her encyclopedic documentary on the figures and history of this rich but gritty era. Blank City includes compelling interviews with such luminaries as Jarmusch, Zedd, Poe, John Waters, Steve Buscemi, Lydia Lunch, Lizzie Borden, Eric Mitchell, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Bette Gordon, Glenn O'Brien, John Lurie, and anyone who was anyone in the late-'70s East Village art scene. Ample film clips from seminal works bring to life a time and a place lost to gentrification and commercialization in the '80s, but that lives on in a still-thriving tradition of avant-garde art.

Then there's “Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB" directed by 34-Mandy Stein. (She's the daughter of Sire Records honcho Seymour Stein.) You may read the description of it here.

Danhier and Stein are interviewed in this week's Downtown Express. Stein adheres to a familiar philosophy:

After CBGB’s closed, the space remained empty for a year before John Varvatos moved in with a men’s apparel shop in 2008. He preserved as much of the original club as possible, with walls covered in graffiti and flyers, and rock memorabilia all around. “Thank GOD for John it’s not a Duane Reade,” Stein says.

Meanwhile, Danhier, who grew up in Paris and first saw New York watching "After Hours," had this to say:

In Danhier’s view, the East Village today is, “Construction, construction, construction. It feels strange because a lot of the new constructions don’t seem to fit with the landscape. I do think it’s very tame now. That feeling of being on the edge of something is gone. But, then you find other parts of New York to go to — areas of Brooklyn or a new place in Manhattan will open up — and you’ll feel that energy once again. It just is always shifting around,” she says.

P.S.
Tix for the festival go on sale Monday ... though downtown residents can buy their tix starting Sunday...(They went on sale for AmEx holders Tuesday...) The TFF runs April 22 through what seems like November. (OK, OK -- May 3)