Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s annual Tribeca festival, which opened Wednesday night and runs through June 16, will look a little different this year.
For the first time, Tribeca will screen short films created by artificial intelligence.
It’s one of the first public embraces of new technology in the entertainment industry, which many actors and writers fear will render them obsolete. The use of artificial intelligence was a major sticking point in last summer’s Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA attacks.
“People are worried about jobs, and that’s something we’re all worried about,” Rosenthal told The Post. “But I think it’s also going to be about creating new jobs… if you’re a VFX guy [visual effects] editor, you’ll still be a VFX editor … you’ll just have new tools to play with.”
It’s the latest move by the 23-year-old festival to keep up with the changing media landscape. While good old-fashioned films and documentaries are still the stars, the festival dropped the word “film” from its name in 2022 and was rebranded as simply the Tribeca Festival.
“We want to bring all artists and all different kinds of storytellers under our one big roof,” Rosenthal said.
In recent years, Tribeca has also added awards for less conventional mediums such as video games, music videos and audio storytelling.
“Artists are spinning… they’re making pieces in VR, in art, they’re making games,” Rosenthal said. “It’s a much more fluid way to see how artists approach the world and the stories they want to tell.”
The moves come despite the fact that both Rosenthal and De Niro are veterans of conventional films. They first teamed up to make Val Kilmer’s 1992 film Thunderheart and, over the decades, have produced partners on a number of notable projects, including the Oscar-nominated The Irishman, A Bronx Tale and “Meet the Fockers.” .
This year’s Tribeca festival will highlight a number of high-profile traditional films, including “Daddio,” starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn; the arrival of the fairy tale “Sacramento” with Michael Cera and Kirsten Stewart; and “Winter Spring Summer or Fall” with Jenna Ortega as a teenage prodigy.
The documentary “Diane von Furstenberg: The Woman in Charge” will open the festival on Wednesday evening.
Last month, Rosenthal spoke at an AI film festival in NYC hosted by Runway, a company that edits and creates videos using artificial intelligence. It also launched a partnership between Runway and Tribeca to involve the company in reviewing AI short video submissions.
“I always like to play with new tools that can help us tell our stories and the best ways,” Rosenthal said. “Look, the business is changing … we’re all consuming things differently.”
As Tribeca embraces new technology, it’s also celebrating its iconic co-founder Robert De Niro with a “De Niro Con” in honor of the actor’s 80th birthday.
“What do you get Bob De Niro for his 80th birthday? We decided to throw a De Niro Con,” said Rosenthal. The event, scheduled for June 14 to 16 at Spring Place, is an added celebration to the usual Tribeca events.
It will include an immersive experience with exhibits featuring old photos, notes and scripts, as well as 13 shows and fireside chats. Quentin Tarantino and DeNiro will talk about “Jackie Brown,” director David O. Russell and Ben Stiller have the honors for “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Martin Scorsese and Nas will discuss “Mean Streets.”
There will even be a competition for the best sandwich in the actor’s honor – called “Hero De Niro”.
And, as always, New York is the star of Tribeca. Part of the reason the festival started in 2002 was to revitalize downtown neighborhoods after 9/11 destroyed much of the Financial District.
And while it went online in 2020 during pandemic lockdowns, Tribeca returned in person in 2021 — one of the first big events that got people excited to be here again
“Hugh Grant said the best thing,” Rosenthal told The Post. “‘The only thing for a film festival, is an excellent amount of vitamin B12 per year for any city’.”
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Image Source : nypost.com