The festival, which was founded after the September 11 attacks to rejuvenate Lower Manhattan, opened with the premiere of nine short films produced by SOS (Save Our Selves), an organisation to raise awareness on climate change.

The night signified not only the opening of this year's festival, but also the growing connection between filmmakers and the issue of global warming. Gore, who starred in the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, said artists play an important role in the movement.

"Art, music, film, dance, poetry -- all the arts -- have long been our greatest tools to explore the regions of imagination that defy our efforts to think rationally about subjects that our emotions tell us are too painful to contemplate,'' he said.

Tribeca, which held its first festival in 2002, was founded by Robert De Niro, his producing partner, Jane Rosenthal, and her husband, the entrepreneur Craig Hatkoff.

Though festivals customarily open with the premiere of a high-profile feature film, Rosenthal told The Associated Press ahead of Tribeca's opening that the decision was easy.

SOS founder Kevin Wall said the organisation has commissioned 60 short films. The nine shown last Wednesday night generally ran about five minutes long and sometimes felt like public service announcements.

They included visions of a flooded New York City, an animated hippo and turtle talking about changing temperatures, footage from a giant landfill in Brazil and a reminder of the especially harsh effect global warming is expected to have on Africa.

Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose documentary Jesus Camp played at Tribeca last year and went on to land an Oscar nomination, showed a film entitled One Less Car that showed the benefits of riding a bike in New York City.

Martin Scorsese, Petra Nemcova, Jimmy Fallon, Diego Luna, Christopher Walken, Paul Haggis and Josh Lucas were among who attended the festival.