Just to throw my two cents in: the brief story I wrote on Saturday about the Tribeca tix hike contained part of communications director Tammie Rosen’s lengthy statement to me about the festival’s rationale for the $18 price. What I didn’t include was her insistence that – in addition to needing to defray the costs of updating theaters’ projection equipment and flying in talent – the festival is “operating at a deficit” and therefore is simply trying to keep itself afloat. My apologies to Tammie for the omission. But I have to ask: are moviegoers going to be sympathetic enough to TFF’s plight that they won’t mind shelling out the extra $6? Unlikely. Also, V.A. Musetto notes that most international film festivals operate at a deficit and survive with the assistance of corporate sponsorship (this one’s brought to you in part by American Express), so Tribeca can hardly claim that as an unusual extenuating circumstance.

On a side note, I would be a lot more amenable to $18 prices if the festival in question were more clearly organized and better publicized; every year it’s so impossible to sift through the information on the overstuffed TFF website that I just give up and wait for films to come out in mainstream release.