Tribeca Film Festival 2009 Mini-Preview: Documentaries
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<p>The 8th Annual <a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/">Tribeca Film Festival</a> kicks off next Wednesday, April 22nd and continues through May 3rd. Earlier this week we looked at <a href="http://gothamist.com/2009/04/14/tribeca_1.php">some of the highlights</a> from the narrative feature category; here's a taste of some of the feature-length documentaries screening during the festival. For starters, there's the premiere of <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Burning_Down_the_House_The_Story_of_CBGB.html?c=y&3301=170131&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB</a></em>. Directed by Mandy Stein, the documentary features archival footage of performances by Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, Bad Brains, and The Ramones, and explores the unlikely transformation of a club named Country Bluegrass Blues into a punk rock mecca.</p>
<p>In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, TFF will host a free screening of <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Making_the_Boys.html">The Boys in the Band</a></em>, the 1970 film based on Mart Crowley's groundbreaking play. The festival will also screen a special work-in-progress version of <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Making_the_Boys.html">Making the Boys</a></em> (pictured), directed by Crayton Robey. The documentary features the many people involved with the original stage play and film, including Crowley, Edward Albee, and Paul Rudnick.</p>
<em><a href="http://gothamist.com/2009/04/14/tribeca_1.php?gallery0Pic=2#gallery">Passing Strange</a></em> isn't the only Spike Lee joint to be unveiled at the Tribeca Film Festival; he'll also be on hand for the world premiere of <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Kobe_Doin_Work.html?c=y&3301=170176&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Kobe Doin' Work</a></em>, his documentary about a day in the life of Lakers star Kobe Bryant. That day happens to coincide with a late-season 2008 game between the Lakers and the Spursâone with major playoff implications. Lee's film follows Bryant around with unprecedented access, and during the game captures his every movement and word using a wireless body mic and over 30 cameras.
<p>The chilling documentary <a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Cropsey.html?c=y&3301=170136&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title"><em>Cropsey</em></a> explores the disappearance of five children on Staten Island in the '80s. "Growing up on Staten Island, filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio had often heard the urban legend of 'Cropsey.' It was a cautionary tale invented to keep them out of the abandoned buildings that remained of the Willowbrook Mental Institution. Cropsey was supposedly an escaped patient who would come out late at night and snatch children off the streetsâsometimes with a hook for a hand, other times with a bloody ax. But in 1987, Jennifer Schweiger, a 13-year-old with Down syndrome, disappeared from their community. For Zeman, Brancaccio, and the other kids of Staten Island, their urban legend became real."</p>
<em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/PStar_Rising.html?c=y&3301=170201&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">P-Star Rising</a></em> tells the story of Jesse Diaz, who in the '80s was a flash-in-the-pan performer in the hip-hop world. Years later, he's a broke single father living in Harlem with two kids. But one of them turns out to be a precocious, nine-year-old rapper, and director Gabriel Noble follows four years of father-daughter ups and downs as they navigate the grit and the glamour of the music biz.<em> P-Star Rising</em> will screen for free on the 25th as part of the Tribeca Film Festival <a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/events/drive-in/">Drive-In series</a>.
<p>Johnny Knoxville is listed as an Executive Producer on this documentary about a colorful Appalachian family named White. Directed by Julien Nitzberg, <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/The_Wild_and_Wonderful_Whites_of_West_Virginia.html?c=y&3301=170236&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia</a></em> gets up close and personal with the White clan, which is known as much for their disturbing and excessive ways as they are for their famous mountain tap dancing legacy. Stabbings, attempted murder, drug trafficking and a child custody battle ensue.</p>
<p>Punk-fueled documentary <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/The_Wild_and_Wonderful_Whites_of_West_Virginia.html?c=y&3301=170236&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Con Artist</a></em> concerns artist Mark Kostabi, a star of the East Village art scene in the '80s who "gleefully made a fortune signing and selling artworks painted by a revolving stable of hired hands." <em>Con Artist</em> "looks at Kostabiâs ultimately self-destructive skewering of the celebrity art world and his current obsession with getting back on top."</p>
<p>Director Leslie Cockburn and former Nation columnist Andrew Cockburn have put together a documentary about the collapse of the financial industry called <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/American_Casino.html?c=y&3301=170126&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">American Casino</a>.</em> While "eliciting candid revelations from defectors from Bear Stearns and Standard & Poor's and other high-level players in the subprime mortgage gamble, <em>American Casino</em> also gives a voice to the minority Americans on 'Main Street'âa high school teacher, a therapist, a ministerâwho were the unwitting chips in this high-stakes game of chance." Following the May 2nd screening, the Cockburns will be joined by NYU Stern School of Business Economics Professor and Chairman of RGE Monitor Nouriel Roubini, and Bloomberg News correspondent Mark Pittman to talk about the origins of the mortgage crisis and its continuing ramifications.</p>
<em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Partly_Private.html?c=y&3301=170201&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Partly Private</a></em> asks the age-old question, "To cut or not to cut? Pregnant with a baby boy, director Danae Elon and her husband face 'a big choice about his little penis.' From New York to London, Istanbul to Israel, Elon travels the world in an effort to understand the controversial ritual of male circumcision. At the heart of this emotional, shockingly funny journey is a modern family, an innocent little boy, and a motherâs unwavering love."
<p>The "No Wave" experimental art and filmmaking scene in the late '70s, early '80s New York is chronicled by director Celine Danhier in her new documentary <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Blank_City.html?c=y&3301=170131&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Blank City</a></em>. The film includes interviews with such luminaries as (deep breath) Jim Jarmusch, Nick Zedd, 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."</p>
<em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Racing_Dreams.html?c=y&3301=170211&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">Racing Dreams</a></em> goes behind the scenes at the World Karting Association's national championship, in which kids age 11 to 13 compete in what's perceived as a huge stepping stone to auto racing's big show: NASCAR. "None of them can legally drive on a city street, but they each masterfully zip around a course at nearly 80 mph. Yet driving fast may be the easiest challenge facing these ambitious kids. Throughout the course of an entire WKA season, they each encounter not just the trials of adolescence but also the realities of a sport requiring great amounts of money to even compete."
<em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Fixer_The_Taking_of_Ajmal_Naqshbandi.html?c=y&3301=170151&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">The Fixer</a></em> tells the terrible story of twenty-four-year-old Afghan Ajmal Naqshbandi in 2007. While working as a "fixer," someone hired by foreign journalists to facilitate news stories, he was captured with an Italian journalist by the Taliban in Afghanistan. "With the aid of his government and high levels of publicity, the Italian was spared, but the Afghan wan't so lucky. After the dust of his murder settles, Ajmal's friends, family, and his fellow abductee try to make sense of the harsh fate that befell him."
<p>Actor Hugh Jackman narrates <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/The_Burning_Season.html?c=y&3301=170131&curView=browseDetail&sortBy=title">The Burning Season</a></em>, a provocative documentary about "poor farmers on the Indonesian islands who, every year, set fire to areas of pristine rainforest to set up palm oil plantations. The smoke chokes up the air of neighboring countries, endangers forest wildlife, and emits vast tons of carbon (Indonesia is now the third largest carbon emitter behind the United States and China)." Following the April 27th screening, director Cathy Henkel, CEO of Carbon Conservation Dorjee Sun, New York Times environmental correspondent Elisabeth Rosenthal, and others will participate in a discussion on carbon trading, rainforest preservation, wildlife protection, and other issues raised in <em>The Burning Season</em>. Moderated by Ira Flatow (author and host of NPRâs <em>Science Friday</em>).</p>
<p>Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's 1974 fight in Kinshasaâthe "Rumble in the Jungle"âwas accompanied by a music festival called Zaïre 74, which brought together some of the best African-American and native African soul musiciansâSoul Brother Number One, James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Miriam Makeba, Celia Cruz, The Crusaders, Sister Sledge, and othersâfor three days of electrifying performances. The legendary Albert Maysles was just one of the documentary filmmakers and cameramen capturing all the onstage and backstage action, and after lying unedited for years, the footage, along with stellar audio recordings, has been crafted into the new documentary called <em><a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Soul_Power.html">Soul Power</a>.</em></p>