More
than 200 filmmakers and industry leaders showed their
support for both the Tribeca Film Festival and the DGA
at the kickoff breakfast of the Second Tribeca Film
Festival in New York on May 7.
DGA director David Hugh Jones, who directed
Festival co-founder Robert De Niro in Jacknife,
spoke for many when he expressed his hope that the
biggest benefit to emerge from the Festival would be a
continued commitment to the Big Apple. "To eliminate
shooting in Toronto when New York is the setting, of
course, is the goal," he said, but that will only
occur, "when either the director or the stars sit down
and say, 'This is a New York story. I will not shoot
this in Toronto.' "
The
seriousness of the runaway production crisis arose
again and again, and many spoke of ways to keep Gotham
as a vital filmmaking center. "We have a 30-member
NYPD unit that facilitates all production," Katherine
Oliver, Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film,
Theater and Broadcasting said. "We're sending a new
message with this new administration that we want your
business, we need your business, and we want to
support all of these projects. We're in tough times,
so we're working very hard to look at different types
of incentives that we can offer filmmakers."
One
of the consistent forces with a commitment to New York
is, of course, De Niro. Jane Rosenthal, also a
Festival co-founder, said that De Niro always wanted
to establish his film studio, Tribeca Films, near
where he was raised, and found his location in a
century-old coffee factory in the Greenwich Avenue
area 15 years ago. At the time, the area was mainly
warehouses and dark streets. De Niro not only
reclaimed the area, he brought movie production back
to its historic roots. The first movies produced in
New York were shot just a few avenues over on lower
Broadway at the turn of the 20th century.
The DGA and other guilds benefit directly from the
revitalization of the reclaimed area, Rosenthal said.
"A very important part of Tribeca Film is to help
production stay in New York."
DGA
filmmakers attending the breakfast included Neil
Burger, Leslie Harris, Nancy Savoca and Dan Algrant.
Burger pointed out that the sincerity of the Festival
as a New York event was demonstrated by the inclusion
of two programs focusing exclusively on New York.
Algrant spoke of the symbolic significance of the DGA
welcoming breakfast. "When the filmmakers see that the
DGA is interested in a wide scope of films, the
filmmakers get a sense of what the DGA stands for and
that it is an inclusive Guild." |
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