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    At the Tribeca Festival, Standouts Come From Near and Far

    A documentary about a New York restaurant and a Korean film about dine-and-dashers are among the standouts in this year’s festival.“You have to be used to change in New York,” Matthew Broderick remarks in “Raoul’s, a New York Story,” a documentary highlight of this year’s Tribeca Festival. The film centers on the celebrated French bistro, which opened in Soho in 1975 amid a cultural renaissance and became a fixture for local artists. Since then, survival of the richest has all but erased la vie bohème from the neighborhood in favor of a catwalk of retail storefronts — though Raoul’s is still standing, its arty interior nearly unmodified.To Broderick, that’s just life in the city. “Everything we hold incredibly dear,” he says in an interview in the film, “took over for something that somebody else held dear.”His remarks could very well be a slogan for the Tribeca Festival. Its obsession with novelty has, in recent years, made it an almost manically multifarious affair. Alongside movies, this year’s edition — which runs Wednesday through June 15 — will host video games, audio storytelling and an immersive program stamped with a catalog of acronyms: A.R., V.R., A.I. While festivals like Cannes are steeped in tradition, Tribeca is eager to be seen as a celebration of transformation, a festival of the future.The zeal with which Tribeca pushes forward can feel exciting, but like an overactive online shopper, it also generates clutter. It’s hard to find the gems. Sampling this year’s lineup, I found that the most memorable world premieres sorted into two subsets: the near and the far. International standouts come from Korea, India and Chile — a long way from the Triangle Below Canal Street. Then there are the local discoveries, capturing a New York spirit that aligns with the festival’s setting.Straddling both categories is “Raoul’s,” which tells the story of the Soho canteen by tracing its origins to Alsace, France, and then chronicling the Raoul men’s travels in Bali, Indonesia. The documentary was shot over a decade by Greg Olliver alongside Karim Raoul, who took over the restaurant’s day-to-day operations after his father, the founder Serge Raoul, suffered a stroke. As such, the film is as much a portrait of a local institution as it is a tale of a father and a son, exploring notions of legacy, heritage and what it means to sideline personal dreams for family obligations.A scene from Yang Jong-hyun’s film “People and Meat.”via Tribeca FestivalWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tribeca Festival: Lin-Manuel Miranda Has Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers

    An artist development program at the Tribeca Festival aims to support underrepresented groups in filmmaking.The Tribeca Festival is undoubtedly a star-studded event with famous figures, including actors, directors, musicians and artists gracing red carpets and showcasing their works.But supporting aspiring and emerging filmmakers through its artist development programs is also very much part of the festival’s DNA, according to its chief executive, Jane Rosenthal, who founded the event with Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff.“So much of the festival is about discovery, and the development programs are part of that,” she said. “We are always looking for new voices and stories and new ways of telling stories, and there are not enough programs supporting aspiring artists.”Since 2015, the artist development programs have included eight initiatives that give producers, directors, writers and other creative people in the moviemaking industry full funding for their projects.Rosenthal said that they have awarded close to $2 million annually, supported more than 1,000 filmmakers and seen celebrities such as Kerry Washington, Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo get involved as mentors and judges. “Everybody needs an advocate, and celebrities, no matter where they are in their careers, help lift these filmmakers up through their support,” Rosenthal said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For Pride, Stream These Queer Horror Movies

    Standouts include a lesbian-coded vampire thriller and a Mexican folk-horror drama.In horror movies, to be queer is to be different, “which cinema has continually rewritten as a form of danger,” Peter Marra writes in his new book, “Queer Slashers.”Dangerous, queer, different: Sounds like my kind of horror movie. Here are some of my favorites.‘Dracula’s Daughter’ (1936)Rent or buy it on major platforms.“She Gives You That WEIRD FEELING!”: That’s how one poster advertised Lambert Hillyer’s lesbian-coded vampire thriller, a follow-up to “Dracula,” a hit for Universal Pictures in 1931. Hillyer’s movie centers on Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), a Dracula progeny who kidnaps a young woman in Transylvania. Holden’s performance is predatory but feminine, menacing but soft-eyed — a powerful example of how lesbian subtext in early Hollywood paved the way for future Sapphic vampires.‘The Seventh Victim’ (1943)Rent or buy it on major platforms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Best Movies and Shows Streaming in June: ‘The Bear,’ ‘Phineas and Ferb,’ and More

    “Phineas and Ferb,” ”The Bear” and “The Gilded Age” are coming back, and “We Were Liars,” “Hell Motel” and “Stick” debut.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of June’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘We Were Liars’Starts streaming: June 18This adaptation of E. Lockhart’s award-winning young adult novel of the same name follows Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), one of a group of teenage relatives known in the family as “the liars.” (Their parents and their billionaire grandfather, Harris Sinclair (David Morse) called them that because of all of the mischief they got up to and then lied about when they were little.) When one of the summers together at the Sinclair family’s oceanfront estate goes tragically awry, Cadence is left with only vague memories of what happened. She has to piece together the details, with very little help from her bickering aunts or her suddenly and inexplicably aloof cousins. The mystery winds through a flashback-filled story, covering the romances and the regrets of the very rich.Also arriving:June 12“Deep Cover”June 15“The Chosen” Season 5June 25“Countdown” Season 1June 27“Marry My Husband”Eric McCormack in “Hell Motel.”Anthony Fascione for Shaftesbury/ShudderNew to AMC+‘Hell Motel’ Season 1Starts streaming: June 17In the opening scene of the Shudder series “Hell Motel,” a newlywed couple stops on a stormy night at a remote roadside inn, where they are ritually slaughtered by Satanists. Thirty years later, a handful of true-crime enthusiasts and influencers are invited to the motel to promote its reopening. When the guests start dying in gruesome ways, the survivors have to figure out who among them might be responsible. “Hell Motel” was cocreated by Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter, whose anthology series “Slasher” paid similar homage to classic horror and mystery tropes. Eric McCormack stars as a creepy celebrity chef, whose snide attitude exemplifies the kind of questionable characters who have gathered at this place, any one of whom could be a potential victim — or a potential killer.‘Nautilus’ Season 1Starts streaming: June 29A reimagining of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas,” this adventure series has Shazad Latif playing the infamous Captain Nemo. In this version of the story, Nemo has been held in a prison in India, forced to do slave labor in helping to design and build a technologically advanced submarine, the Nautilus, for a tyrannical British mercantile company. When Nemo and several of his cellmates break out of jail and steal the ship, they embark on a mission to the farthest reaches of the seas, to find treasure and infuriate colonialists. “Nautilus” plays a little like an ocean-bound, steampunk “Star Trek,” following a motley crew of honorable outlaws as they explore the unknown.Also arriving:June 1“Dead Silence”“Insidious”June 2“Relative Secrets”June 5“The Killer Clown: Murder on the Doorstep”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tribeca Festival: Music and Movies Make for a Successful Mix

    The festival has more than 20 music events this year — its highest number yet — including documentaries, music videos and podcasts.Metallica, Billy Idol, Miley Cyrus and Depeche Mode — they are just a few of the music acts participating in the Tribeca Festival this month. The Korean rock band the Rose, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Wizkid and Anderson .Paak are also part of the mix.These artists are either the subject of documentaries or have a hand in creating films premiering at the event, which starts Wednesday and runs through June 15. Following their screenings, some musicians, like Billy Idol and Eddie Vedder, are taking the stage to perform in intimate settings compared with their usual mass crowds. Others, including Depeche Mode and Metallica, are sitting for conversations with audiences.Music has been a part of the event since its inception, according to the festival’s director and senior vice president of programming, Cara Cusumano. In its first edition in 2002, the festival partnered with MTV for a free community concert in Battery Park City with Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows, Wyclef Jean and David Bowie. “We have always considered Tribeca a storytelling festival, so music fits in alongside the other forms of storytelling we celebrate like games, immersive, TV, podcasts and, of course, film at the center,” Cusumano said in an email interview.Much like the festival itself, the amount of music at Tribeca has only grown over the years, she said. The increased presence of musical programming is driven by its popularity with audiences. Cusumano said that the music events saw the highest number of attendees compared with the number of attendees at any other part of the festival. Tribeca is hosting more than 20 music events this year — the highest number yet — including documentaries, music videos and podcasts.“Anecdotally, we often hear audiences speak about how special the experience was since they have usually just seen a doc about the artist, which puts the show and the artist themselves in a unique context,” Cusumano saidIn 2011, Tribeca opened with “The Union,” a documentary about making the eponymous album from Leon Russell and Elton John. In his performance for audiences after the premiere, John dedicated his love ballad “Your Song” to New York. The film and John’s concert set the precedent for Tribeca opening with a music documentary whenever possible, Cusumano said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At Tribeca Festival, ‘The Scout’ Spotlights a Low-Profile Role

    Written and directed by Paula González-Nasser, who worked as a location scout for about six years, the film explores the existential quandary at the heart of this seeming dream job.It’s often said that the city a movie is set in is like a character in the story — think New York in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” or Hong Kong in Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.” But it takes a location scout to find the ordinary streets and houses that create a complete, lived-in picture of that place. This largely invisible but important role in moviemaking provides the lead character of “The Scout,” which premieres Thursday at the Tribeca Festival.Paula González-Nasser wrote and directed “The Scout” after toiling as a location scout for around six years. The filmmaker, who grew up in Colombia and Miami, got into the business after moving to New York in 2016, when a scout left the show where she was a locations production assistant. What followed were busy stints on the shows “High Maintenance,” “Search Party,” “Broad City,” and films like “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” — driving around, knocking on doors, and leaving fliers in neighborhoods in search of the perfect locations for scenes.She started keeping a diary of her appointments, if only to preserve more of the memories of all that she saw. When the idea struck her to tell a story about her job through a movie, she knew she didn’t want to show the hustle-and-bustle on set that meta movies about filmmaking often focus their energies on.“You never see the boring, drab, behind-the-scenes part of making a movie,” González-Nasser said during an interview in a cafe in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood where she had scouted locations for the HBO series “High Maintenance.”When scouting locations, González-Nasser would enter homes and take photographs to present to the filmmaking team.Paula González-Nasser“But,” she continued, “I also wanted to show a character in a job that was blending the personal and professional and pulling her in many different directions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    James Grashow Documentary Focuses on Life, Death and ‘The Cathedral’

    The process of making a wood sculpture of Jesus Christ took the artist James Grashow four years to complete.There are some weighty topics — both biblical and personal — that are explored in the documentary “Jimmy & the Demons,” about the sculptor and woodcut artist James Grashow.First there is the art, which is inspired by religion. Grashow, 83, is the titular “Jimmy” in the film, which will debut on Sunday at the Tribeca Festival. The documentary tells the story of his quest to complete “The Cathedral,” his five-foot-tall wood sculpture of Jesus Christ bearing a cathedral on his back while sinister creatures — many of them demons — flock around his feet. It is playful and surreal and obsessively detailed.Then there is the personal: Grashow’s ruminations about life, or more accurately, death. The film captures the artist’s view about the sculpture possibly being the “grand finale” of his career and his belief that he is “in the bottom of the ninth” of his life. The feeling of mortality is strong. Even more resonate, however, are Grashow’s passion for his craft and love for his family.Grashow in his work space that is featured in the documentary “Jimmy & the Demons,” which follows his quest to complete “The Cathedral.”Jennifer WastromDuring a video interview last month, Grashow expressed mixed feelings about “The Cathedral” being finished. “It’s an unbelievable relief,” he said. But elation over completing the project was balanced with another emotion: “At the same time, there’s sort of an emptiness,” he said. “Where do I go now? And what do I do?”“Beginnings are the most difficult,” he said. “Being in the process in the middle of the project is phenomenal.” He likened his creative experience to an enormous spiral. “The fist steps are unbelievably sluggish, but as it quickens and the vortex keeps spinning around, you can’t wait to get up in the morning and approach the work.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lin-Manuel Miranda reflects on upcoming Latinx films

    A program at the Tribeca Festival, the organization he helped create, aims to support underrepresented groups in filmmaking.The Tribeca Festival is undoubtedly a star-studded event with famous figures, including actors, directors, musicians and artists gracing red carpets and showcasing their works.But supporting aspiring and emerging filmmakers through its artist development programs is also very much part of the festival’s DNA, according to its chief executive, Jane Rosenthal, who founded the event with Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff.“So much of the festival is about discovery, and the development programs are part of that,” she said. “We are always looking for new voices and stories and new ways of telling stories, and there are not enough programs supporting aspiring artists.”Since 2015, the artist development programs have included eight initiatives that give producers, directors, writers and other creative people in the moviemaking industry full funding for their projects.Rosenthal said that they have awarded close to $2 million annually, supported more than 1,000 filmmakers and seen celebrities such as Kerry Washington, Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo get involved as mentors and judges. “Everybody needs an advocate, and celebrities, no matter where they are in their careers, help lift these filmmakers up through their support,” Rosenthal said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More