David Kwok Talks Tribeca 2010 | The Irish Film & Television Network

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded following the September 11th attacks in a bid to celebrate New York City as a major filmmaking center and to contribute to the long-term recovery of lower Manhattan. With the 2010 edition of the festival, David Kwok discusses this year’s event and the strong Irish presence at the 2010 festival.

An unprecedented seven Irish projects – five feature films and two shorts – will screen at Tribeca 2010. The prestigious festival will see the world premieres of both psychological drama, ‘Snap’, from debut feature director and writer, Carmel Winters (writer, Odd Sock) and road trip feature, ‘My Brothers’ directed by Paul Fraser (Scummy Man) and written by William Collins. Other works selected include ‘Cairo Time’, ‘The Crush’, ‘The Pool’, and ‘Zonad’.

“It’s exciting because this is the most Irish features we’ve ever had and those are along with two great shorts as well,” David tells IFTN, continuing enthusiastically, “and it’s great that we have people like Rob Walpole and Rebecca Flanagan coming back with their new feature film ‘My Brothers’ with the director, Paul Fraser who was over here previously with ‘Somers Town’ which he wrote.

“And then of course we have Martina [Niland] and David [Collins] coming over with ‘Snap’ and we’ll be introducing Carmel [Winters] whose work is really fantastic. Then obviously Neil Jordan will be here with ‘Ondine’ and John and Kieran [Carney] with ’Zonad’, which I think people will be really interested to see, especially having seen ‘Once’.”

Snap

Both ‘Snap’ and ‘My Brothers’ will screen alongside ten other films as part of the festival’s World Narrative Competition, which saw over 5,055 submissions. “It’s the highest that we’ve had,” says Kwok, with obvious relish. “Each year the number of submissions grows and I think this is because of globalisation. In 2002 we had 1,300 submissions overall and now, 9 festivals later, we’re at more than 5,000.”

David has been the director of programming for Tribeca since its inception in 2002 when it was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. In the last year he travelled to Dublin, London, Paris and Montreal and various film festivals including Santiago, Buenos Aires, Warsaw and Moscow to scout movies for this year’s event. Connections with the Irish Film Board originally brought David to Dublin on scouting duties two years ago and one wonders if he has ever questioned this method of traipsing around the globe to see films that could easily be posted to him? “Not at all,” comes the response, “it’s great doing it this way because not only do we get to see the films, we also get to meet the Irish producers and directors. And I think that helps us connect with people and shows them how active we are in trying to bring as many films as possible over to New York.”

Irish talent present at this year’s Tribeca does not stop at screenings, it was announced recently that IFTA winner, Aidan Quinn (The Eclipse) is one of the panelists invited to judge this year’s World Documentary Competition at the event. Quinn will join actress Jessica Alba, producer Margaret Brown, Oscar nominated filmmaker Marshall Curry, actress Whoopi Goldberg and producer Eric Steel on the jury. David has jury experience himself having come to Dublin for the 2010 IFTAs where he was a panellist on the jury for the IFB Rising Star Award.

David Kwok

Ireland has enjoyed success at Tribeca in the past with wins for Declan Recks’ ‘Eden’, for which Eileen Walsh won Best Actress; Steph Green’s ‘New Boy’, which walked away in 2008 with the title of Best Narrative Short and, most recently, Conor McPherson’s ‘The Eclipse’ which saw leading man Ciarán Hinds crowned Best Actor in 2009. These wins obviously play no small part in bringing film’s their deserved further achievements. “A lot of people come here to see ‘who’s next’. So with films like Conor’s ‘Eclipse’ the festival really is a good platform,” David agrees, before further explaining, “No-one knew what was going to happen with ‘The Eclipse’, none of us thought to ourselves ‘This is going to be the hit of the festival’. We were hoping it was going to get a good response but the success it had was unexpected, and very much deserved.”

David finishes emphatically, stating: “I know the Irish film community is small compared to other nations but it is a very robust industry because there is so much new talent starting up as well as established filmmakers.” We couldn’t agree more.

The Tribeca film festival runs from Wednesday, April 21st to Sunday, May 2nd in New York City. For more information about the festival visit www.tribecafilm.com

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