TFF is in full swing right now, with as many films, parties, panels, and special events as one could ever want...or dream of. With hundreds of filmmakers, industry, and press, dozens of stars, and thousands (millions?) of festivalgoers - and the entire stressed, sleep-deprived, running-solely-on-adrelalin-and-hors d'oeuvres festival staff running around the city trying to make it all run smoothly - there's certainly no lack of drama and excitement.
But amidst the insanity and the sheer enormity of it all, it's the quiet moments spent getting to know a few people that makes the rest more manageable. Such was a certain set of introductions made at the Apple Store party last Thursday evening, where I met the star players of Toronto-based film company Shoes Full of Feet: Kris Booth, Raj Panikkar, and Bryce Mitchell. Their short film For All the Marbles - directed by Kris, produced by Raj and Bryce - is playing in the Family Festival's Show and Tell program.
These guys are AWESOME. We spent more than one night hanging out together, and with other short filmmakers, and suffice it to say that I could not have asked for a better way to spend the first weekend of my first Tribeca Film Festival. We ate, talked film, had drinks, I showed them around Tribeca very late at night, and even took them into Tribeca Cinemas through the "back door" (i.e. the Box Office...according to Kris it was "SO Goodfellas"). It's not every day that you meet people who you want to know for the rest of your life, but it happened to me last week, and it was brilliant.
To the Shoes - I still don't know you very well, but my life improved when we met. You rock my world.
Raj, Bryce, and Kris. Perfect photographic summary.
Warning: I'm going to seriously, deeply, and utterly film-geek out now.
This week the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival is presenting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the North American premiere of Passio, a new film by film curator, critic, and writer Paolo Cherchi Usai.
An unprecedented work of visual and auditory revelation, Passio is more an experience than an event, one that transcends filmic norms and enters a realm of internal perception and lost memory. Inspired by and set to Arvo Pärt’s musical interpretation of the Passion in St John’s Gospel — “Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secondum Johannem,” one of the last musical masterpieces of the 20th century — Cherchi Usai’s experimental silent film draws on a century of world cinema to call attention to the overlooked and suppressed, penetrating the extremes of human existence pull hope even from our moments of deepest failure and despair. "The images for this work have been chosen from the countless manifestations of our neglected or repressed collective memory,” reads the press kit, “ranging from documents of political and racial oppression to scientific experiments, depictions of human suffering turned into mass spectacle, and the deliberate destruction of moving images." Ephemeral and shocking, exultant and humbling, Passio is truly a passion of its own — of the soul, of humanity, of cinema itself.
TFF is honored to be presenting this extraordianry work in The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, and at Trinity Church, Wall Street. This will be only the second time — the first was in Adelaide, Australia in February of this year — the work has been presented accompanied by live music.
April 27, 8 p.m., The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
April 28, 7 p.m. & 10 p.m., The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
April 29, 3 p.m. & 5.30 p.m., Trinity Church, Wall Street
*tickets available online, by phone, and at any Walk-Up Box Office location.
PASSIO
2007, Netherlands, Italy, U.S.A., 74 min.
black&white/color/handcoloring, 35mm
Silent with live music
DIRECTOR: Paolo Cherchi Usai
PRODUCERS: Peter Limburg, Livio Jacob
CALLIGRAPHY AND HANDCOLORING: Brody Neuenschwander
VISUAL EFFECTS: Gerard de Haan, Paulo Fonseca
ORIGINAL MUSIC: “Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secondum Johannem,” by Arvo Pärt
MUSIC PERFORMED BY: The Trinity Choir, The Caleb Burhans Ensemble
CONDUCTOR: Owen Burdick
ORGANIST: Robert P. Ridgell
MUSICIANS:
Jesus: Andrew Nolen
Pilatus: Matthew Hughes
Evangelist Quartet: Martha Cluver (Soprano), Matthew Hensrud (Countertenor), Daniel Mutlu (Tenor), Tim Krol (Baritone)
TFF EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Mark Steele
TFF PRODUCTION MANAGER: David Shelley
An Isabella Rossellini Presentation
The Lewes Polar Bear Plunge: an annual event held at Rehoboth beach, Delaware to raise money for the Special Olympics. The video news report for WDEL-Wilmington is here, created and narrated by my [insane] friend Sean Greene.
Raj, Bryce, and Kris. Perfect photographic summary.
