Do The Math: Tribeca Film Fest x 15 = 2016 Vexed by ‘Vaxxed,’ TFF preps for scheduled slate, minus one BY SCOTT STIFFLER Set to take over a multitude of Downtown screens and scenes from April 13–24, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), now in its 15th year, is already making headlines with an embarrassingly adolescent misstep: its declaration that one previously announced selection won’t be seeing the flicker of a single TFF projector. “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” a documentary taking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to task for suppressing information linking the MMR vaccine to autism, was pulled from the schedule after a brief but messy public outcry from those who said the film’s very presence would give credence to ill-advised parenting and medical quackery. “My intent in screening this film,” said festival co-founder Robert De Niro, “was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for. The Festival doesn’t seek to avoid or shy away from controversy. However, we have concerns with certain things in this film that we feel prevent us from presenting it in the Festival program. We have decided to remove it from our schedule.” That was it for “Vaxxed,” as well as any further discussion on the matter. “We commented over the weekend,” said a TFF press representative, when asked to expand on why such a carefully curated festival — whose post-screening Q&As don’t shy away from robust discussion — would make the unprecedented move of launching a preemptive strike against one of its own. No amount of steak pressed against that black eye will soon restore the festival’s well-earned reputation for championing provocative work — and the
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April 07 - 13, 2016
Photo courtesy Maurizio Cattelan Archive
Maurizio Cattelan kicks a burning baby carriage in Milan, in “Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back.”
fact that “Vaxxed” is currently screening at the Angelika Film Center further magnifies the perception that De Niro and his programmers were both asleep at the wheel and too quick to pull the kill switch. That said, we’re still proceeding ahead with our annual genre-structured preview of TFF flicks (all of them still booked as of press time!). So consider taking a chance on the following 21 films — a number that, unlike 15, references an age of maturity at which the stage is set for a lifetime’s worth of integrity and good judgment. Zing!
GOING HOME, GETTING REAL & LETTING GO A powerful strain of melancholy seems to have gripped the programmers of this year’s TFF, who’ve curated a festival with a robust quotient of films that task their main characters with returning to old haunts and — by choice, force, or circumstance — growing up. UK writer/director Rachel Tunnard
Photo by Alison Rosa
In “The Family Fang,” Jason Bateman and Nicole Kidman, as Baxter and Annie Fang, launch a search for their missing parents.
parlays her British Academy Film Awards-nominated short into a fulllength comedy about almost-30 Anna’s fits-and-starts attempt to acquire
“Adult Life Skills.” After the death of her twin brother, she moves back
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