New York

While vampires made a big splash at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, a documentary about a son of Transylvania carved out a decidedly different niche for itself.

About this new column: Many filmmakers ponder in anguish, How do other people—celebrated people—do it? Am I taking too long to make this documentary? Does everybody spend as much money as I am spending, or am I spending too little? And when filmmakers share their lessons learned in interviews in the glossy trade magazines, their tales seem to follow the arc of otherworldy heroes rather than real documentary makers, i.e. human beings like you and me. So starting this month, the Doc Doctor decided to go out into the world (this real world) of filmmakers who are successful and find out how they made it. Each month, her "anatomy" will be a chance to learn from their hits and misses in real life examples. —Fernanda Rossi, story consultant a.k.a. the Documentary Doctor

Running a family business. Keeping children’s education first. Staying independent through increased corporate consolidation amidst a radical overhaul of the way film and video is distributed. Given all of that idealism, it may seem that educational film and video distributor Landmark Media has its work cut out for it.

When artist and newbie filmmaker Karen Gehres turned her camera on her friend and fellow painter Elise Hill, she thought she’d capture a few cool stories about Hill’s past as a runaway, a heroin addict, a stripper, and a prostitute—all while learning how to use her shiny new film equipment.

I’m the director of the low-budget psychological thriller Room (2005), which premiered at Sundance and had its international debut in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes in May. Room was produced by The 7th Floor along with Jim McKay and Michael Stipe’s C-Hundred Film Corp. Our four-week, twenty-four-day production was equally divided between two weeks in Texas and two weeks in New York City. The film centers on the mid-life crisis of a bingo hall employee and mother of two in her late 40s who leaves her family to follow migraine-induced, debilitating visions.

In New York, a rooftop is not merely a rooftop. Part refuge, part observation deck, the roof is where New Yorkers go to escape, embrace, and celebrate their city. It’s no surprise then, that filmmakers have long used rooftops to convey New York life: they’re ubiquitous, photogenic, and, most of all, emblematic. Think of all the rooftop shootouts and foot chases in the great New York gangster films—from The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) to Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

I am white and alone in a darkened room at night with over four hundred Dominicans in New York City. It is a room full of laughter. A room full of stereotypes embraced and shattered. And a room every American should experience in one way or another.

New York City: the one place on earth that may, at least in the eyes of its own citizens, come close to being all things to all people. Dizzying variety in every direction has always been at once the draw and curse of the place—and so too has it been for the annual Tribeca Film Festival, which took over its namesake Manhattan neighborhood for the third time this May.

The hottest week of the year in New York City coincided with the Third Annual New York International Latino Film Festival, July 30–August 4. As the temperature never dipped below eighty degrees (even at night), fifty films divided into four categories (domestic features, documentaries, shorts, and international features) unspooled at two well air-conditioned venues on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The word on the street is that the New York-based Urbanworld Film Festival is a black film festival, but inside the theaters it becomes clear that Urbanworld is a showcase for a diverse group of minority filmmakers. From the pulsating hip hop beat of the Clipse’s Lord Willin’ in the opening trailer to the broad range of the sixty films screened, Urbanworld’s niche as a premiere minority festival is undeniable. But their attempt at a balancing between Hollywood and the independent world is a little shaky.