MANHATTAN, NY – In a time where even stepping outside your front door can be a bit unsettling, the Tribeca Film Festival really made a point to make their attendees feel right at home.
With social distancing being enforced at the 11-day festival (June 9-20), the festival included a potential new way of viewing movies: virtual reality. One of the movie screenings that was premiered at the festival, Alton Glass’s “Point of View”, gave viewers the option either for a mobile screening or virtual reailty experience. In an interview with our host Ally Bechtold, Glass said that the work took him about three years to complete.
The Tribeca Film Festival, in its 20th anniversary, made a point to make this event as much as an extravaganza as possible despite the mask wearing and distance regulations. Two highly-anticipated movies made their world premiere at the event: Dave Chappelle’s yet-to-be-titled documentary and Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move. Chappelle’s documentary focused on the issues plaguing his current hometown in Ohio during the beginning of the pandemic as well as the emotions that spilled regarding the Black Lives Matter movement in that time.
To bring relief to his neighbors, Chappelle put on socially-distanced live comedy shows from his neighbor’s cornfield. For Chappelle, the documentary was more about the resilience of man than anything else. The documentary got the honor of closing out the festival at Radio City Music Hall.
“Premiering our film at Tribeca and closing out the festival at Radio City Music Hall is a big honor,” said Chappelle. “Our film is about courage and resilience, something New Yorkers can relate to.”
Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move”, the Centerpiece Gala selection for the festival, is a crime film that features an all-star cast of Hollywood veterans such as Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Brendan Fraser, Ray Liotta and more. For Soderbergh, he was grateful that the movie was able to get a live showing in front of the very fans he loves the most: New Yorkers.
“A year ago I was on lockdown in Tribeca, so I never imagined we could return 12 months later with a new movie screening for a live audience in our neighborhood,” Steven Soderbergh. “I’m VERY happy.”
The festival wasn’t just about movies, though. The festival celebrated its first-ever Podcast Program, as well as its first-ever Games Award. To add, Tribeca had an all-star cast of live comedy at the event, with acts like Bill Bellamy, Cocoa Brown, Helen Hong and Steven Michael Quezada among the bill over five days.
To say that the 20th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival was a success would be an understatement. That they were able to pull off an event of this size in an area that was at one point considered the worst hit by COVID-19 is a massive victory.
