While we usually avoid drawing you guys into the nitty gritty of who’s going where in the film industry, today’s announcement that Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore will be heading east to join the Tribeca Film Festival team is just too interesting to skip over.
For starters, Gilmore spent 19 years at Sundance, turning it from the little indie fest that could into the crazy stars-in-Uggs extravaganza that it is today. The fact that he’ll be bringing that kind of know-how to TFF could mean that the only film festival that we always get to attend (it’s local!) could become a launching ground for a much more interesting slate of films next year. (We’d wager that programmers have already locked down the bulk of the movies for this coming April.)
So what does this mean for the gang back in Park City? It’s interesting; while there wasn’t a lot of “buzz” coming out of this past year’s fest, we heard time and again that the films were some of the best that critics had seen in years. It will be interesting to see come next January how much Gilmore had to do with the indie magic and whether he’ll be able to help Tribeca — which has a kind of schizophrenic, albeit super brief, history — come up with a stronger brand identity.
And now a word from the man himself, from the press release posted on indieWire:
“‘I believe that Tribeca Enterprises is well positioned to develop a film organization that can create a new paradigm for the future,’ Gilmore said, in a statement today. ‘The vision of its leadership, its structure and resources, and the track record of its brief history give me great excitement at the opportunity to join their enterprise. I’ve had a wonderful nineteen years at Sundance and will always be grateful to Bob Redford. For me this is a big decision, a huge change and an enormous opportunity.'”
We wish we were close enough to Redford to call him Bob. Le sigh.