‘Right film, wrong time’
NEW YORK Political currents have always flowed through the Tribeca Film Festival, founded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But this year, the festival has a pugnacious edge to counter the policies of its midtown neighbour, U.S. President Donald Trump. Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro, after all, has repeatedly said he’d like to punch Trump in the face.
Trump’s 100th day in office will fall during the New York festival, which opened Wednesday with a Clive Davis documentary, Soundtrack of Our Lives, and concert tribute to the legendary music producer. Tribeca, now in its 16th year, is the first big film festival to be programmed in the political climate since last November’s election. Tribeca organizers acknowledge it has shaped this year’s festival all the way down to its slogan: “See yourself in others.” There’s an accompanying video in which New Yorkers walk the streets with mirrored cubes for heads: an intended message of empathy, it says, for “a very divisive year.” “We programmed the festival this year the way the current administration did their budget,” festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal said sarcastically. “That said, we’re also about entertaining — which this administration has also done for us.”
Tribeca is an eclectic festival that encompasses celebrity talks, television premières, a virtual-reality component and several movie anniversary celebrations. So while defining a theme in a multi-screen, multimedia festival only goes so far, there’s a presence of films that dig into the past for clues that lead to today. Many are documentaries that help articulate the populist unrest that pushed Trump to the White House.
A Gray State, by Grizzly Man producer Erik Nelson, is a doc about Iraq veteran David Crowley, who was trying to create a dystopian science-fiction film that gave voice to libertarian and right-wing fears. Before the film was made, Crowley murdered his wife and young daughter, then committed suicide. It’s a tragedy in which an increasingly troubled man appears to internalize the fringe politics he consumes himself with.
“It’s really a core sample, to me, of what’s going on today,” says Nelson. “David was speaking to that … audience out there looking for truths they don’t see provided in the quote-unquote mainstream media. And on election night, we saw those people come out of the shadows and tip a few elections.”
Crowley documented much of his disintegration on social media, and Nelson considers his obsessive self-broadcasting part of his sickness.
“It’s not the right film for the right time,” says Nelson. “It’s the right film for the wrong time.”