In this article, we are going to talk about one of the most famous film festivals in the United States. It is the Tribeca Festival, which annually hosts over 600 screenings with approximately 150 thousand visitors. More information about its founding and activities can be found on manhattanski.
Foundation
The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by the American film and television company Tribeca Productions. The event is usually held every spring in Manhattan, where numerous TV series, films, music, games, art and exciting programs are shown.
The film festival was founded in 2002 by three people: businessman Craig Hatkoff, actor Robert Anthony De Niro and film producer Jane Rosenthal. The reason for the creation of this festival was the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center, which caused the economic decline of the Tribeca district in Lower Manhattan. The first festival took place in 2002. It was organized in an extremely short time, namely in 120 days. This happened thanks to the support of many volunteers. At that time, the event was visited by more than 150 thousand people. The festival included documentary and short film competitions, various discussions, premieres, etc. Such films as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Insomnia, About a Boy, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and many others were broadcast.
Further development of the Tribeca Festival
In 2003, the Tribeca Festival gained new momentum. The event gathered more than 300 thousand people and significantly expanded its program. The event featured outdoor cinema and sporting events, musical concerts and a family festival that included children’s film screenings, storytelling, family panels, workshops and interactive games. The culmination was a one-day street fair that attracted almost 250,000 people. That year, one of the festival’s founders, Robert Anthony De Niro, purchased a movie theater at 54 Varick Street, which later became known as the Tribeca Cinema. There, independent films were shown every night. Since 2006, the Tribeca Festival has significantly expanded its geography. It has begun to appear in other areas of Manhattan and abroad. Internationally, the festival has presented films at the Rome Film Festival and received the Steps and Stars award.
Modern festival
In 2009, according to Barron’s magazine, the festival organizers were included in the list of the twenty-five best philanthropists in the world. In 2011, the Tribeca Festival recognized and premiered such video games as Beyond: Two Souls and LA Noire. The year 2020 became an obstacle to holding the traditional annual film festival due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the difficulties, this problem was solved by creating a ten-day international online film festival called We Are One: A Global Film Festival. It worked in partnership with YouTube. A variety of films, music, performances and much more were broadcast to an audience of almost two million people. Thanks to the broadcast, funds were raised to help fight the pandemic. It should also be noted that the organizers created temporary drive-in theaters in open areas to conduct safe screenings during quarantine.
Innovations took place from 2021 to 2024. In addition to traditional film screenings, joint screenings were organized in different boroughs of New York. In 2021, the festival added a separate video game category. Nominated games were presented online during the festival, similar to film screenings.