De Niro Creating New Film Festival in New York

By Stephen M. Silverman

12/06/2001 at 12:00 PM EST

Actor Robert De Niro is planning a film festival for the middle of next year, in an effort to pump up the economy and emotional well-being of his neighborhood in lower Manhattan, which has been hit hard following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, according to "The New York Times." The four-day event, to be called the TriBeCa Film Festival, is set to begin May 1, and will include premieres of about 40 feature films, some independent and some from studios, "The Times" reported, along with short films, documentaries and student works. "We'd been thinking about doing a film festival for a long time that reflected the fabric of the neighborhood," film producer Jane Rosenthal told the newspaper. "Then when Sept. 11 hit, our neighborhood was devastated by those attacks. We both felt we could do something that would help rebuild the vitality of lower Manhattan." Rosenthal, along with De Niro, founded TriBeCa Productions in 1988. Of the attacks and the festival, two-time Oscar winner De Niro told "The Times": "This was not only an experience in my neighborhood, but an experience in my city and my country. (The festival is) just a way of helping, you know."