Lights! Camera! Blogging! Welcome to the 5th Annual Tribeca Film Festival

In a few short days New York will once again welcome the Tribeca Film Festival to its downtown streets, along with 270 films from 40 countries plus all sorts of panels, parties, special events...and, best of all, blog posts! That's right -- the Huffington Post will be enthusiastically blogging the Fest from start to finish (and, in the case of the film "Air Guitar Nation," Finnish) over the course of its thirteen-day run. Our crack team of bloggers assembled especially for the occasion will be attending a huge cross-section of the events, not only reviewing films, attending panels and walking the red carpet with Robert DeNiro* but also offering first-person blog posts from filmmakers and other industry participants (first up is "Encounter Point" director Julia Bacha, who will write about her experience in this follow up to her hugely successful "Control Room") plus interviewing numerous participants in print and on video (aka "cornering people at parties").

Of specific interest to HuffPost readers will be the slate of political-themed movies: the festival will be premiering with "United 93" which, while obviously a sobering and probably quite disturbing film (the trailer alone is a gut-punch), it's an appropriate one given the festival's original mandate, which was to bring New Yorkers back downtown to Tribeca in the wake of September 11th and the fall of the World Trade Center. Other films of potential interest include Michael Winterbottom's "The Road to Guantanamo"; "The War Tapes," culled from footage shot by American soldiers in Iraq; "Lockdown USA" about rap mogul Russell Simmons' crusade against Rockefeller drug laws; and "The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl" about the Wall Street Journal reporter who was slain in Pakistan in 2002. Other notable political films include "Close to Home," "Blood of My Brother," "Shadow of Afghanistan," and "A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution -- Intelligent Design Circus." FYI for those of you in NYC -- if not, we'll be there and will let you know our thoughts.

In the meantime, check out our first Tribeca-related post from Tobi Elkin: "Porn, Press and Premieres: "American Cannibal's" Own Reality Drama" and round-up of festival coverage courtesy of upcoming TFF blogger Stu Van Airsdaile, whom we are borrowing from The Reeler. Check this space often -- we'll be back soon with more coverage of the 2006 Tribeca Film Fest. See you there!

*May not actually be walking the red carpet with Robert DeNiro.