2008 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ATTENDANCE
May 19th 2008 06:56
The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival has been once again a massive hit with over 85% of tickets for festival events and screenings being snapped up by film enthusiasts accounting for more than double the estimation of Festival organisers. Over 400,000 people attended this years festival , which featured two “hubs” in Lower Manhattan and the Union Square area and ran from April 23 through May 4, screened 121 features and 79 short films from 41 countries.
“One of our key goals for this year’s Festival was to further enhance the audience experience. To that end, we actually lowered ticket prices by 20% and centralized our screenings and activities with our new "dual hubs" in Tribeca and the Union Square area,” said Craig Hatkoff, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival.
Organisers also estimated a crowd of 225,000 attended the popular Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair and ESPN Sports Day on May 3 which took place along 8 blocks of Greenwich Street and ajoining side streets in Tribeca.and the Tribeca Drive-In, drew combined crowds of 10,000 to three evenings of free, outdoor screenings of Thriller Night: Thriller & The Making of Thriller, Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins and We Are Marshall, which all featured pre-show live interactive entertainment, including the world’s largest zombie disco during Thriller Night.
And just for the record, here are a few facts about this years festival.
199 directors attending the festival 130 directed feature films in the Festival and hailed from 23 different countries with 90% of all feature film directors and 85% of all short filmmakers attended the Festival. With a journey of more than 31 hours, Palden Gyatso (subject of the documentary Fire Under Snow) had the longest trip to the Festival. His journey began with a 13 hour bus ride from Damsala, India to New Delhi, followed by a 1 to 2 hour plane ride from New Delhi to Mumbai and finally, a 17 hour flight from Mumbai to New York.
As well as the large attendance by filmmakers at the festival 980 industry delegates also attended the Festival while the Festival featured 2,750 volunteers 148 delegates hailed from 25 other countries and of the 2,750 volunteers, 723 were returning Festival volunteers with the oldest volunteer 77 years old and the youngest 18.
Dates for the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival will be announced soon. Additional information can be found at www.tribecafilmfestival.org <http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/> .
About Tribeca Film Festival:
Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan through an annual celebration of film, music and culture. The Festival’s mission focuses on assisting filmmakers to reach the broadest possible audience, enabling the international film community and general public to experience the power of cinema and promoting New York City as a major filmmaking center.
Since its founding, the Festival has attracted more than two million attendees from the U.S. and abroad and has generated more than $425 million in economic activity for New York City.
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