David Kwok, Director of Programming For The TriBeCa Film Festival

Looking at your bio, you've been with the Film Festival since its inception Yes I have. It's weird to think of it that way, but yeah.

What have your jobs been as it progressed? You haven't been Director of Programming the whole time. I've been a programmer since the beginning and then I became Director of Programming in 2005 or 2006, I can't remember. But I've been a programmer since 2003 as my official title. The first year I did Competition Selection Committee and I did shorts.

Uhm, so how did you get that job? [laughs] Well, I went to NYU and majored in Cinema Studies in the mid-'90s. I didn't know anything about film festivals. I mean, I'd been to a few, I'm from California, but I didn't know anything about how they were run, I didn't know there was such a thing as programming at festivals. So I started interning at some of the smaller festivals in the city and then I just sort of fell into the festival world and the rest is history! I just kind of bounced around and ended up at Tribeca.

How many submissions were there this year? Between features and shorts we had almost 5,600. And to put that into perspective, when I started in 2002 we had 1,300. So in less than ten years the number of submissions has tripled.

As Director of Programming, how many of the submissions do you actually watch? Well, I travel a lot to other festivals and markets and I do private screenings in different cities so between that and what I watch at the office, all of us, the whole programming team, it averages out to about 500 features each. The shorts team watches a lot more because they're doing shorts. But we kind of worked it out that it's 400-500 per person.

The programming team is 11 people? We have the core group, which is myself, Genna Terranova, who's the Senior Programmer; two programmers, Cara Cusumano and Roya Rastegar. That's the core four of us and then we have three more associate programmers on top of that. So within the features side we have seven, and the shorts team has two main programmers doing that.

Can you walk me through how a movie gets from submitting to actually being in the Film Festival? How many eyes end up seeing it before it's selected? Well they get seen by at least two of us and then more will see it if it's something that's going on to our short list and then we'll just continually talk about it if it's something that we know we want to take right away, early on. But when it comes down to the nitty gritty at the end, where it gets a little ugly, we have long conversations with each other. We continually talk and we may put something to the side and bring it back later or replace it with something. It's kind of like a big puzzle and, besides watching, it's really a lot of talk.

The Festival is organized into different sections like Shorts and World Film; are those set in stone? Do you know what those are going to be initially when you start programming or do you say, "Hey, actually, let's put these in the World Narrative section." This year we streamlined the sections. We used to have more but we also used to have a lot more films. The reason was because it made sense with the number of films we're showing overall. When we watch a film, we always want to think of it, if it's eligible, to go into competition first. If it doesn't go into competition then we'll figure out the best place for a film to be, and a lot of times that happens at the end. We just want to get through the films we actually want to show and then we'll start to section them out. Some are pretty obvious, like some of the drama films we know are going to go in the Cinemania. And the rest we just kind of have to talk about it and say, "You know, maybe it works better here and this film goes with this film so let's put these together."

And can you explain the difference between just showing a movie and having it be in competition? Yeah, the real difference is that the competition films are judged by a jury and they will award the films in various capacities: best film, best cinematography, best screenplay, best actor, that kind of stuff. That's the only differences. In terms of how the films are presented, they're all presented the same.

How do you decide which ones go into competition and which ones don't? [laughs] That's why everything happens at the end. We like the competition to reflect what the whole program is like. So different types of films and what the balance of the lineup is going to be. So we're like, "The competition doesn't have this kind of film or we feel that this film is a strong candidate and the jury will warm to it because of X, Y and Z." So we're looking at all viewpoints. One, what is our personal reaction to the film? Two, what are the strong points of the film? How will they play within a jury competition? Which ones probably have good press reactions to it. We just kind of talk it out and see which ones are going to work and go from there. There's always those ones where it could go either way; there's no science or formula, it's just kind of how it all lays out.

Do you take into account what other film festivals have shown or are going to show? Yeah. The great thing about this year, and we always try to do this, is we have a good balance of world premiere films and films that have been recognized at other festivals. The world premieres, Jesus Henry Christ and Blackthorn and God Bless Ozzy Osbourne; then you have films like a'amour fou and The Trip and The Guard, which have played Toronto or Sundance, some come from Berlin. There's a good balance of that. For the moviegoer it's really what piques people's interest less than what section they're in, as a general audience person. If they're interested in the sections, it's a great thing to follow how the films are doing at the festival and what sections and which ones pop out from each one.

Do you have an ideal film goer who you're programming for? Or are you trying to make sure there's something for everyone? More of the latter. For a film programmer it's such a luxury to be in New York because all film makers love to come to New York but also we have all different types of festival goers. So we know there's an audience out there for pretty much every film that we have in the festival. We kind of think about that, that's one thing in our decisions: Who's going to come out for this film? Who's going to be really interested? Is there a new audience that can be brought to this film and vice versa. That's the purpose of the things like the ESPN Sports Film Festival that we have. That's why we lay out the program the way it is where we don't segregate anything. With the exception of Documentary Competition, all the documentaries show alongside the narrative films. The American films play alongside with the non-American productions. Experimental along with straight narratives. We want to have everybody at their best and at an even playing field.

With the big ticket premieres and the opening night movies: are those decided the same way as everything else or are those handled with more of an eye towards PR? Something like Opening Night is more of a collective thing, it's more than just the programming group. That involves Executive Director Nancy Schafer and Co-Founder Jane Rosenthal because that's something that needs to be particular because it's leading off the whole festival. The idea with this year, which is great, it's the first year we're opening with a documentary and we're also doing it for free outdoors, which is a new thing for us. It all kind of fit together. It kind of led off giving a tone for the festival because we have so many films about music as well. It's two of our things: one, documentaries do really well with us and two, we always have strong music films as well.

The Elton John one is opening night, right? Yeah, The Union.

The Union, directed by Cameron Crowe.

Over the years, have there been any submissions that you've regretted not including? Yeah. [laughs] There's a few that I go, "Oh...yeah...I should have thought about that one." Or I let it slip through my hands kind of thing. In terms of the team, and how we work together, towards the end it becomes a "pick your battles" kind of thing. Everybody's so passionate about different films and we all want to get the ones we're really passionate about into the festival but that's not the consensus with everybody. So which one do I feel is the most important, of the group that I want, and we only have so many slots left. So I get what I can in and the other programmers do the same thing so there's always going to be those ones where, "I wish we had that one in."

Is there a "most frustrating" part of programming that you could talk about? That would probably be having to tell people we know that we're not showing their film. That's always the worst part. It's exciting when you get to call somebody and say, "We want to invite your film to the festival," and it's all great. The flip part, which is, okay now we're done with the programming so we have to let everybody else know that we haven't selected them. Most people are gracious about it, but when you have a really good, close relationship with somebody, someone who has shown in the festival in years past or something like that...filmmakers. It's their work and they work a lot on these projects and to just say, "No, we're not going to show the film." It's not the greatest feeling in the world.

It kind of puts you in the college admissions type of role. Exactly.

Was there a movie from any particular established filmmaker this year that really surprised you? Well the ones that are established that we have...The Trip is hilarious, which is Michael Winterbottom's film. Jiang Wen who made Let the Bulletts Fly, who is a huge name, Cameron Crowe, who is leading off the festival. What I'm more excited about is the reaction that I'm beginning to see because there are some different things that are happening. Let the Bulletts Fly is being shown for the first time outside of a Chinese-speaking country so no public, western people have seen it yet. So I don;t know what the reaction is going to be on it, I'm hoping it's good. And then we have some exciting people like Mateo Gil, [director Alejandro Amenabar]'s screenwriter, and this is his second directorial film. We have the first Rwandan feature film, so we're looking forward to that. Jesus Henry Christ came out of our Institute, The Tribeca All Access Program, and it's a great comedy and I'm hoping that it plays well to an audience and also because it's been a part of Tribeca for so long I want it to do well. I'm excited to see some of the figures that the documentaries are about: Ozzy, Carol Channing, Jon Gnarr, who's the mayor of Reykjavik and if you've seen the trailer on our site you'll see why. He's a comedian who ran for office and won.

When you say, "see how the audience reacts," do you actually go and watch some of the movies with the audience? Usually when I'm introducing the film I might stay there for the first five to ten minutes, if I can, just to see how it looks because I never get to see them on the big screen. Especially with the comedies, people are reacting well, or if it's a horror film and people are getting into it I may pop in-and-out. Obviously between the audience awards to see which ones are being voted on the best, which aren't. After the screenings I'm usually around to see. And then when the reviews come out and the chatter happens around the films that's what I like to hear.

You get to hear the reactions immediately. Yeah, for better or for worse.

I guess my last question is, with ten years under your belt, what do you think has been the most interesting thing in seeing the Film Festival take shape and where do you see it going? Where are we going? Actually this is a great point for us because now we're heading into our second decade. I think we're really looking towards the future so that's why we have the Online Film Festival as well as a distribution platform. It's really about thinking, about what can a film festival do that's more than just the physical event? The physical event will always be there because you can't ever replicate the feeling of being in the cinema with other people, the interactions between the filmmakers and the audience. But can we extend the festival beyond that? Helping films get bigger exposure. Getting people that can't physically be at the festival get a feeling of it. Both of those platforms are really going in the right direction and we'll see what happens in the next couple of years because things change so fast nowadays. Something else might happen and we're constantly adapting and thinking about what should we do next.

Finally, just out of sheer curiosity: How many of the programmers actually live in Tribeca? Actually I don't think any of us do! [laughs] I live on the Lower East Side, Genna lives in Brooklyn, Cara lives in Gramercy Park and Roya lives in the East Village.

Oh geez! None of you are even available for the Below Canal Street ticket deal! I'm below Houston?