NEW YORK, April 25,  (AP): A much-anticipated documentary about former New York governor Eliot Spitzer premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Though many of those interviewed for the film were in attendance Saturday evening, the documentary’s subject was not. Director Alex Gibney, whose “Taxi to the Dark Side” won the 2007 documentary Oscar, interviewed Spitzer four times over the two years he spent making the film. Though it was billed as unfinished and doesn’t yet have a title, Gibney said the film was “mostly finished.” He made the film in tandem with author Peter Elkind, whose book “Rough Justice: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” was recently released. Ashley Dupre, the former call girl involved in the scandal, was not interviewed for the film. Gibney told the audience she asked for editorial control, which he refused.

Dupre said in an e-mail that she didn’t want to grant an interview without “approval over the edit.”
“I didn’t think it was smart to participate after what I’ve seen with editing,” said Dupre. “I think everyone is trying to move on with their lives and by me participating in their project would only open old wounds.
Among those interviewed on camera were former CEO Cecil Suwal of the Emperor’s Club VIP escort service and Spitzer rivals former New York Sen. Joe Bruno and Kenneth Langone, the former director of the New York Stock Exchange.
Gibney said he also discovered the identity of another prostitute, “Angelina,” whom Spitzer frequently visited. She wouldn’t be interviewed on camera, though, so Gibney hired an actress to read her answers in character. Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, didn’t grant an interview for the documentary.
Often sitting on a couch in a suit with his legs crossed, Spitzer looks directly into the camera as he tries to explain why he continued to visit prostitutes before resigning in 2008.
“You cave to temptations in ways that seem easier and perhaps less damaging,” he says.
The documentary tracks Spitzer’s meteoric rise in New York politics and his crusades against Merrill Lynch, AIG and the New York Stock Exchange. The film also raises questions about the investigation into the Emperor’s Club, suggesting that political motives may have been behind the investigation.
Gibney said Spitzer had not yet seen the film but is expected to soon.

Also:
NEW YORK: When Christy Turlington Burns began to hemorrhage soon after the birth of her first child six years ago, she didn’t think it was such a big deal.
But when she learned that hemorrhage is a leading cause of maternal death and that hundreds of thousands of women die in childbirth every year, the 41-year-old supermodel said she felt compelled to do something about it. On Saturday she makes her directorial debut at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival with “No Woman, No Cry,” a documentary designed to raise awareness and funding so that the number of maternal deaths are reduced.
“I had a sort of experience that was a little bit of a survivor’s guilt,” said Turlington Burns, who is an advocate for maternal health for humanitarian group CARE. “I was fortunate, but think of all the women around the world who aren’t.
“I had a complication, which I honestly didn’t think of as such a big deal at the time. I was in a place where I was really well-supported,” she told Reuters. “What happens when you are that much further from the care that you may need?” After visiting Peru with CARE after the birth of her second child, Turlington Burns, who is married to actor and filmmaker Ed Burns, decided to make a documentary on the issue.

The Peruvian community she visited succeeded in reducing maternal deaths, but “hundreds of thousands of women are dying every year, and 90 percent of those deaths are preventable,” she said.
According to the World Health Organization, the main causes of deaths related to childbirth are hemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labor. Turlington Burns spent two years making her self-financed film, which tells stories about childbirth in Tanzania, Bangladesh, Guatemala and the United States. She said the 60-minute documentary will allow viewers to “put their feet in the shoes of somebody else whom they might not think they have anything in common with. ... Certainly birth and pregnancy are one of those things in life that can connect people.” To coincide with the world premiere of her film, Turlington Burns is launching www.everymothercounts .org to raise awareness and funding to reduce maternal deaths. “We should be doing a better job,” she said. (RTRS)