| Rebuilding with Film |
5 May 2003
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Tribeca Film Festival Opens
Tribeca is a part of the island of Manhattan, and until September 11, 2001 was best known as the part of town JFK, Jr. lived in and where Robert DeNiro had a restaurant and screening room. Now, the TRIangle BElow CAnal (New York names things poorly; there is also a DUMBO, but one digresses) is known as where the rubble of the Twin Towers fell. To revive the area, Mr. DeNiro has started the Tribeca Film Festival, a drop in the bucket, perhaps, but noblesse oblige ranks highest in Kensington's opinion.
Film festivals are odd things. Places like Cannes, where normally things are quiet and the residents like it that way, suddenly turn into the center of the entertainment world for a couple of weeks. The glitterati come, spend some money, and leave after watching films day-in and day-out. It seems some people feel about movies the way one wishes they felt about books.
The Tribeca event will be no different, but its location is significant. Businesses in that part of the island have had revenues slashed in the last eighteen months -- even federal loans have not saved some of them. Mr. DeNiro, as a business owner in that part of town, does have a vested interest in the neighborhood and so his festival is self-interested. Yet he was there before the attack on his street, on his neighbors, on his friends. Unlike many, he is not an interloper; he is part of the community.
His talents as an actor and director have made him famous and rich, and it would be easy to pick up his federal check and wash his hands of the situation. He does not need the aggravation of arranging this festival, handling the logistics, getting the permissions from studios, city bureaucrats, etc. Except that he knows he must. In many of his mob movies, the turn "stand-up guy" appears -- meaning a person who will do the right thing. It is not a term used here, "gentleman" gets preference. Mr. DeNiro is a gentleman.