Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s annual TriBeCa festival kicked off on Wednesday night and runs through June 16, but this year things will look a little different.
For the first time, the TriBeCa Film Festival will award a short film generated by artificial intelligence.
It’s one of the entertainment industry’s first public embraces of a new technology that many actors and writers fear will make them obsolete. The use of AI was a major issue in last summer’s Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
“People are worried about jobs, and that’s something we’re all worried about obviously,” Rosenthal told the Post. “But I think it’s also about creating new jobs… in visual effects. [visual effects] When you’re an editor, you’re still a VFX editor; you just have new tools at your disposal.”
It’s the 23-year-old festival’s latest move to keep up with the changing media landscape: Though old-school films and documentaries still feature prominently, in 2022 the festival will drop the word “cinema” from its name and rebrand as simply TriBeCa Festivals.
“We want to bring all kinds of artists and different storytellers under our big roof,” Rosenthal said.
In recent years, TriBeCa has also added awards for less common mediums like video games, music videos and audio storytelling.
“Artists are pivoting. They’re making work in VR, in art, in games,” Rosenthal said. “It’s a much more fluid way of looking at how artists approach the world and the stories they want to tell.”
The move comes despite the fact that both Rosenthal and De Niro are veterans of traditional filmmaking, having first teamed up on the 1992 film “Thunderheart” starring Val Kilmer and working together as producers on a number of notable projects over the decades, including the Oscar-nominated “The Irishman,” “A Bronx Tale” and “The Robbers.”
This year’s TriBeCa Film Festival will feature a number of traditional, high-profile films, including “Daddio,” starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, the coming-of-age story “Sacramento” starring Michael Cera and Kirsten Stewart, and “Winter Spring Summer or Fall,” starring Jenna Ortega as a teen genius.
The documentary “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” opens the festival on Wednesday night.
Last month, Rosenthal spoke at Runway’s AI Film Festival in Hollywood, a company that uses artificial intelligence to edit and produce videos. He also launched a partnership between Runway and TriBeCa, bringing the company into the judging of AI short videos.
“I always like to try new tools that help me tell my story in the best way,” Rosenthal said. “Business is changing… We’re all consuming things differently.”
In addition to embracing new technology, TriBeCa is celebrating iconic co-founder Robert De Niro’s 80th birthday with “De Niro Con.”
“What do we give Bob De Niro for his 80th birthday? We’re going to have De Niro Con,” Rosenthal said. The event, scheduled to run from June 14-16 at Spring Place, will be an additional celebration to TriBeCa’s regular events.
The event will feature an immersive experience with exhibits of old photos, notes and scripts, 13 screenings and fireside chats, including Quentin Tarantino and De Niro discussing “Jackie Brown,” director David O. Russell and Ben Stiller honoring “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Martin Scorsese and Nas discussing “Mean Streets.”
There will also be a contest to determine the best sandwich in honor of the actor who has been dubbed “The De Niro Hero.”
And as always, New York is a staple of TriBeCa: One of the reasons for starting the festival in 2002 was to revitalize the downtown neighborhood after much of the Financial District was destroyed on 9/11.
After being held online during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, TriBeCa returned in-person in 2021, and it was one of the first big events to get people excited about being here again.
“Hugh Grant had the best line,” Rosenthal told The Post: “‘The whole point of a film festival is that it’s the perfect opportunity for any city to get a vitamin B12 shot up their ass.'”
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