Tribeca Film Festival 2009

Larry David in Woody Allen's 'Whatever Works'

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival—returning to venues across Manhattan from April 22 to May 3—has the look and feel of a celebration getting back to the basics, with familiar faces (Woody!), nostalgic memorials (CBGB!) and local shout-outs (City Island?!).

But given today's dour economic climate, the fest's organizers acknowledge the need for a festival that would not only galvanize artists, but rally an entire community. "Times are tough and there’s a dark mood right now," says Nancy Schafer, the festival’s executive director. "We wanted to create an experience that not only lifted spirits, but allowed people to take part even if they couldn’t afford a ticket.”

No surprise, then, that this year’s feature-film slate—86 films spread out over four series—is almost a third smaller than last year’s, and that ticket prices haven't gone up ($8 for daytime, weekday and late-night screenings; $15 for evening and weekend events). There are also more freebies: Not only are the festival’s Street Fair and Sports Day events returning, on May 2, but the no-cost Tribeca Drive-In is back, with screenings like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (April 23) and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (April 24), along with three new speaker series.

As for the films, this year's marquee titles mark welcome returns from familiar filmmakers. Woody Allen's new comedy “Whatever Works,” starring “Curb Your Enthusiasm”'s Larry David, kicks off the festival on April 22, while Spike Lee headlines Tribeca’s “ESPN Sports Film Festival” with “Kobe Doin’ Work,” a documentary about Kobe Bryant during the 2008 NBA playoffs.

Steven Soderbergh harkens back to his “Sex, Lies and Videotape” days with “The Girlfriend Experience,” about an exclusive Manhattan escort and starring adult film star Sasha Grey. And in the documentary “Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB,” Mandy Stein memorializes the now-defunct downtown punk haven.

This year's lineup also bolsters the fest's rep for showcasing top-of-the line international debuts, such as Yojiro Takita’s Oscar-winning “Departures," which follows a Japanese musician who takes a job prepping the dead for their coffins.

The festival’s schedule is divvied up into a short program of 46 titles, narrative and documentary competitions, as well as separate series that highlight non-competing films and new projects from “established talent.” In the last category, the most intriguing prospects are “City Island,” featuring an all-star lineup of Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Emily Mortimer and Alan Arkin as a dysfunctional family, and “Don McKay,” starring Thomas Haden Church as a man returning home after 25 years.

Then there's “Serious Moonlight,” the last film written by the late Adrienne Shelly ("Waitress"), about a woman who take her philandering husband hostage. The film, directed by Cheryl Hines and starring Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton, could be the surprise hit of the fest.

It doesn’t take an economist to realize that the festival—along with Detroit, Wall Street and the film industry as a whole—now finds itself at a crossroads. While attendance at major theaters is up, business for art-house titles is on the downturn. And so the Tribeca Film Festival has gone back to the basics, celebrating art over business and reaching out to the surrounding community with freebies and other crowd-pleasing enticements. If 2008 was the year for change, then 2009 is the bumpy year of transition, and Tribeca is attempting to revive the communal spirit of its early days when it first served as a catalyst for downtown's flagging economy in the wake of 9/11. Now, it finds itself weathering a much larger economic firestorm, and is hoping to turn the page.

Tribeca Film Festival kicks off from April 22 to May 3 at various locations around NYC. For a full list of scheduled films and venues, visit www.tribecafilm.com/festival.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics