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Thirteen students from nine U.S. colleges and universities as well as three students from foreign universities have been selected as winners in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Student Academy Awards competition.  This year saw first-time honors go to Elon University, Occidental College and the University of Michigan in the U.S. competition, as well as to Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland, and RITS School of Arts, Belgium, in the foreign competition. The medal placements – gold, silver and bronze – in each of the award categories will be announced at the official aawards ceremony on June 8, 2013.

The winners are (listed alphabetically by film title):

Alternative
“Bottled Up,” Rafael Cortina, Occidental College
“The Compositor,” John Mattiuzzi, School of Visual Arts 
“Zug,” Perry Janes, University of Michigan

Animation
“Dia de los Muertos,” Lindsey St. Pierre and Ashley Graham, Ringling College of Art and Design
“Peck Pocketed,” Kevin Herron, Ringling College of Art and Design
“Will,” Eusong Lee, California Institute of the Arts

Documentary
“Every Tuesday: A Portrait of The New Yorker Cartoonists,” Rachel Loube, School of Visual Arts
“A Second Chance,” David Aristizabal, University of Southern California
“Win or Lose,” Daniel Koehler, Elon University

Narrative
“Josephine and the Roach,” Jonathan Langager, University of Southern California
“Ol’ Daddy,” Brian Schwarz, University of Texas at Austin
“Un Mundo para Raúl (A World for Raúl),” Mauro Mueller, Columbia University

Foreign Film
“Miss Todd,” Kristina Yee, National Film and Television School, United Kingdom
“Parvaneh,” Talkhon Hamzavi, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
“Tweesprong (Crossroads),” Wouter Bouvijn, RITS School of Arts, Erasmus College Brussels, Belgium

The winners will be brought to Los Angeles for a week of industry activities that will culminate in the awards ceremony, hosted by 1978 Student Academy Award winner and comedian Bob Saget, on Saturday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level.  Past Student Academy Award winners have gone on to receive 46 Oscar® nominations and have won or shared eight awards.  The roster includes such distinguished filmmakers as John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Robert Zemeckis, Trey Parker and Spike Lee.

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[caption id="attachment_3882" align="alignnone" width="550"]Approaching the Elephant[/caption]

The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced today the ten documentaries selected for the 2013 Independent Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s  annual year-long fellowship for first-time feature directors.  The key creative teams of the selected films will participate in three week-long sessions over the course of 2013, with the first – the Time Warner Foundation Documentary Completion Lab – taking place May 13-17 in New York City.

The selected projects for the 2013 Documentary Lab and Lab Fellows are:

Approaching the Elephant

Given uncommon freedom and individual rights, a group of young children enroll in a newly opened ‘free school,’ where rules are created democratically – students and teachers have an equal vote – and classes are voluntary. Fellows: Amanda Wilder (Director/DP), Jay Craven (Producer). Brooklyn, NY

Bringing Tibet Home

Tibetan artist Tenzing Rigdol sets out on a mission to bring Tibet closer to Tibetan exiles through an unprecedented art project, inspired by his late father’s unfulfilled wish to breathe his last breath in his homeland. Losing his father made Tenzing realize that wishing to return home is common among all Tibetan exiles.  Thus an art project was born to make this common dream a reality as the artist struggles to bring 20,000 kilos of native soil from Tibet to Tibetan exiles in India. Fellows: Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (Director/ Producer /Writer/DP/Editor); Milica Zec (Editor). Queens, NY

Do I Sound Gay?

Determined to overcome his shame about “sounding gay,” director David Thorpe embarks on a hilarious, poignant, taboo-shattering exploration of the phenomenon of the “gay voice.” With Margaret Cho, Tim Gunn, Dan Savage, David Sedaris and George Takei. Fellows: David Thorpe (Director/Writer); Howard Gertler (Producer). Brooklyn, NY.

Evolution of a Criminal

Deep in the heart of Texas, what begins as an innocent tale of family, sacrifice, and financial hardship quickly escalates into a true-crime thriller. Fusing together compelling interviews, striking re-enactments, and home video, we are forced to ask ourselves how a 16 year-old honor roll student evolved into a bank robber. Darius Clark Monroe (Director); Jen Gatien (Producer); Doug Lenox (Editor). Brooklyn, NY.

Farmer Veteran

Watching a chicken hatch makes combat veteran Alex Sutton smile, so he decides to become a farmer. The sense of purpose he once felt as a soldier returns, but his crippling PTSD remains. Along with his wife, Jessica, he toils through four seasons on a different kind of battlefield and wonders if, for him, the war will ever end. Fellows:  D.L. Anderson (Director/Producer/Editor); Alix Blair (Director/DP); Mikel Barton (Editor). Durham, NC.

In Country

War is hell. Why would anyone want to spend their weekends there? “In Country” is a cinematic feature documentary following a “platoon” of historical reenactors who are recreating the Vietnam War in the woods of Oregon.  Not just a film about the aftermath of the Vietnam War or the fantasies of grown men; it’s a meditation on how the drums of war continue to draw men to battle despite devastating consequences. Fellows: Megan O’Hara (Director/Producer); Mike Attie ((Director/Producer/DP); Lindsay Utz (Editor).  San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA.

Kasamayaki (Made in Kasama)

Shaken by the tsunami and nuclear disasters, a grown daughter returns to her rural Japanese artist community to reconnect with her estranged parents and hometown. Meditative moments at the pottery wheel punctuated by tense family conversations, sudden earthquakes and radiation level readings,Kasamayaki exposes the fragility of life and the imperfect nature of human relationships. Fellow: Yuki Kokubo (Director/ Producer/DP/Editor). Brooklyn, NY

The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest

Mark DeFriest is an American prison legend, an escape artist who has spent 32 years behind bars, most of it in long-term isolation, with little light, hope, or human contact. When the doctor whose diagnosis originally condemned DeFriest to prison admits he was wrong, a new chance for freedom is borne. But is it too late for redemption?  Fellows:  Gabriel London (Director/Writer/DP); Daniel Chalfen (Producer); Nick Clark (Editor). New York, NY

Mateo

Mateo follows L.A.’s most notorious troubadour, Matthew Stoneman, as he fulfills his most recent obsession, “Una Historia de Cuba,” a record of original compositions recorded over the course of six years piece meal style in Havana, Cuba. Ultimately, “Mateo” is a study of barriers — cultural, geographic, and moral — and a man who doesn’t believe in any of them. Fellows: Aaron Naar (Director/Writer/Producer/DP/Editor); Nicole Vaskell (Editor). Los Angeles, CA

Roots and Webs

If you lose your family, you must build it anew. Amid the desolate Oregon wilderness, the lives of two former soldiers intersect. Roger, a former US Army sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a platoon leader with the Khmer Freedom Fighters who fought against Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, come together each autumn for the matsutake mushroom hunt. The two each wrestle with wounds from Southeast Asian wars, attempting to find the high-priced mushroom before snowfall. An odyssey into the woods, into the memory of war and survival, we tell a story of family from this enigmatic woodland realm. Fellows: Sara Dosa (Director); Josh Penn (Producer). Berkeley, CA.

 

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13 film projects have been selected for the Sundance Institute’s annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place at the Sundance Resort in Utah from May 27 through June 27. 

At the Directors Lab, Fellows work with an accomplished group of Creative Advisors, professional actors and production crews to shoot and edit key scenes from their screenplays. Through this intense, hands-on process, the Fellows workshop their scripts, collaborate with actors and find a visual storytelling language for their films. Directors Lab Fellows join five additional projects for the week-long Screenwriters Lab, where they participate in individualized story sessions under the guidance of established screenwriters.

Creative Advisors for the Directors and Screenwriters Labs include Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford, Gyula Gazdag (Artistic Director), Michael Almereyda, John August, Walter Bernstein, Kathryn Bigelow, Scott Burns, Steve Chbosky, Joan Darling, Caleb Deschanel, Suzy Elmiger, Deena Goldstone, Keith Gordon, Randa Haines, Ed Harris, Michael Hoffman, Azazel Jacobs, Pablo Larrain, Josh Marston, Doug McGrath, Andrew Mondshein, Walter Mosley, Jose Rivera, Walter Salles, Jennifer Salt, Susan Shilliday, Peter Sollett, Wesley Strick, Chris Terrio, Joan Tewkesbury, Stanley Tucci, Audrey Wells, Alfre Woodard, Doug Wright, and Mauricio Zacharias.

The projects and participants selected for the 2013 June Directors Lab (May 27 – June 20) are:

Pamela Romanowsky (writer/director) / The Adderall Diaries (U.S.A.): Writer Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his work. Adrift in the precarious grey area of memory, Stephen has to navigate the unstable terrain of truth and identity, led by two sources of inspiration: a new romance, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott.

Pamela Romanowsky is a New York-based writer and director. Her short films Live Girlsand Gravity have played at festivals nationwide, including Slamdance, Woodstock, and the Maryland Film Festival. In 2011, Romanowsky won the National Board of Review’s Student Grant Award and NYU’s prestigious Wasserman/King Award for excellence in filmmaking. In 2012, she wrote and directed a piece for Tar (James Franco, Mila Kunis, Jessica Chastain, Zach Braff), a multi-director narrative film based on the life and poetry of CK Williams, which premiered at the Rome International Film Festival and is awaiting a U.S. theatrical release. She studied documentary filmmaking with Barbara Kopple, and narrative filmmaking at New York University’s MFA film program.

Jan Kwiecinski (writer/director) / The Incident (U.S.A.): When a young man decides to cover up an accidental murder, his whole life comes into focus in ways he never expected.

Jan Kwiecinski graduated from the filmmaking departments of the London Film School and the Wajda’s Master School of Directing. He also holds an MA degree in Theatre Studies from the Theatre Academy in Warsaw. His award-winning short film, The Incident, screened internationally at many festivals including the Shanghai International Film Festival and the T-Mobile New Horizons Film Festival. Recently, Kwiecinski directed the segment entitledFawns of the omnibus feature The Fourth Dimension, co-directed by Alexey Fedorchenko and Harmony Korine. The film premiered in the Narrative Competition at the 2012 San Francisco Film Festival.

Eva Weber (co-writer/director) and Vendela Vida (co-writer) / Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (UK/Germany/U.S.A.): Twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father’s funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees San Francisco and travels to the Arctic Circle to uncover the secrets of her mother, who mysteriously vanished when Clarissa was fourteen. Based on the novel by Vendela Vida.

Originally from Germany, Eva Weber is a London-based filmmaker working in both documentary and fiction. Her award-winning films have screened at numerous international film festivals, including Sundance, Edinburgh, SXSW, BFI London, and Telluride; and have also been broadcast on UK and international television. Her documentary short film The Solitary Life of Cranes was selected as one of the top five films of the year by critic Nick Bradshaw in Sight & Sound’s annual film review in 2008. Earlier this year, she received the Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award to further support the development of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.

Vendela Vida is the author of four books, including the novels Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers. She is a founding co-editor of the Believer magazine and co-writer of the film Away We Go, which was directed by Sam Mendes.

Russell Harbaugh (co-writer/director) and Eric Mendelsohn (co-writer) / Love After Love (U.S.A.): Love After Love is a messy and desperate love story about grief, sex, and the separation of a family.

Russell Harbaugh’s short film Rolling on the Floor Laughing played the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals around the world including the FSLC/MoMA co-curated New Directors/New Films, Maryland Film Festival, Sarasota International Film Festival, Milano, Warsaw, and others. Harbaugh received his MFA from Columbia University in 2011 and is originally from Evansville, Indiana. He lives in New York. 

Eric Mendelsohn’s feature film Judy Berlin, starring Edie Falco and Madeline Kahn, was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, won Best Director at Sundance, Best Independent Film at the Hamptons Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. His short film, Through An Open Window, premiered at Sundance, was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival and garnered him a guest spot on The Tonight Show. Mendelsohn’s most recent feature, 3 Backyards, premiered in 2010 at Sundance and garnered the Best Director award, making him the only person in the festival’s history to have received the award twice.

K’naan (writer/director) / Maanokoobiyo (Somalia/U.S.A.): In war-torn Somalia, an artistic orphan named Maano joins the mercenary killing squad of a notorious warlord, only to discover his adoptive father and gang leader is responsible for wiping out his family.

K’naan is a Somali poet, rapper and singer, songwriter. He spent his childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia and was on one of the last commercial flights out of the country before its collapse. He rose to prominence with the success of his song “Wavin’ Flag” after it was chosen as the anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He lives in New York.

Ian Hendrie (co-writer/co-director) and Jyson McLean (co-writer/co-director) / Mercy Road (U.S.A.): Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife and mother, as she becomes willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.

Ian Hendrie is a San Francisco–based filmmaker and the co-founder of Fantoma, a production company and independent DVD label which has been releasing premium edition DVDs of films by such famed auteurs as Francis Ford Coppola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang, Kenneth Anger and Alex Cox, among others, since 1999.

Jyson McLean has been a commercial director for over nine years. His work includes spots for Bud Light, Career Builder, and Quaker Oats. He has won the ITVA PEER award three years in a row, and has worked with numerous award winning advertising agencies including DDB Los Angeles, BBDO London and Fred & Farid, Paris. He is currently signed at Contagious LA and Magali Films, Paris for commercial representation in America and Europe respectively.

Hendrie and McLean are recipients of a Fall 2011 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant and SFFS FilmHouse residents.

Meredith Danluck (writer/director) / State Like Sleep (U.S.A.): Under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband’s secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger as equally broken as she is.

Meredith Danluck is an artist and filmmaker. Her work has screened at major art institutions internationally including MoMA, PS1, Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, and Reina Sofia, as well as various film festivals including SXSW, TIFF, Doc NYC, Margaret Mead and Hamburg International. Her four-screen film installation North of South, West of Eastrecently screened as part of the New Frontier exhibition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Miguel Calderón (writer/director) / Zeus (Mexico): Sporadically employed and still living with his mother, Joel finds his only joy in falconry in the flatlands outside Mexico City, until an encounter with a down-to-earth secretary forces him to face reality.

Miguel Calderón works in various mediums but has focused mostly in photography, video and writing. He was a co-founder of the non-profit art space, “La Panaderia,” which helped promote new tendencies of art in Latin America beginning in 1994. His exhibitions include the Rochester Art Center, the Sao Paolo Biennial, Museo Tamayo, The Yokohama Triennial and Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. His book projects include Thumbs Down (onestar press, 2012), Backstabbing Gemini (Rochester Art Center, 2012), Eden is a Magic World(littlebigman books, 2011), and Miguel Calderón (Turner, 2007). He lives in Mexico City.

The projects and participants joining the Directors Lab Fellows for the 2013 June Screenwriters Lab (June 22-27) are:

Ray Tintori (writer/director) / Untitled Cabal Project (U.S.A.): Young revolutionaries in love take on the world and each other in a kaleidoscopically complicated universe that’s coming apart at the seams.

Ray Tintori is an American director, screenwriter, and founding member of the Court 13 filmmaking collective. His directorial credits include Death to the Tinman and the music videos off MGMT’s first record. Besides directing, he’s worked in various capacities on Court 13 productions, including production designer and story co-writer on Glory at Sea, and Aurochs and Special Effects Unit Director on Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Bart Layton (writer/director) / The Heist (U.K.): This fiction/documentary hybrid tells the unlikely but very true story of four privileged Kentucky students who, seeking an escape from mundane middle America, hatch a plan to steal millions of dollars of rare books from their university library. 

Bart Layton is a multi-award winning director and producer. His most recent documentary film, The Imposter, received almost unanimous critical acclaim after premiering at Sundance, won the Grand Jury Prize at Miami, the Golden Eye in Zurich and the Filmmakers’ award at Hotdocs before winning a BAFTA and being shortlisted for the Oscars. Layton lives in London and is the Creative Director of leading British production company, RAW.

Andrew Ahn (writer/director) / Spa Night (U.S.A.): Struggling to escape his crumbling family life, a closeted Korean-American teenager follows his desires and finds more than he bargains for at the Korean spa. 

Andrew Ahn is a Korean-American filmmaker born and raised in Los Angeles. His short filmDol (First Birthday) premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and received the Outfest Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Short Film. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in English and received an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts.

Nikole Beckwith (writer/director) / Stockholm, Pennsylvania (U.S.A.): When a young kidnapping victim is reunited with her family after 19 years, her mother discovers she has to work harder than ever to find her daughter, at any cost.

Nikole Beckwith is from Newburyport, Massachusetts. Her plays have been developed with The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons and The National Theatre of London among others. Stockholm, Pennsylvania (2012 Nicholl Fellowship, 2012 Black List) is her first screenplay, adapted from her stage play of the same name.

Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio (writer/director) / Story Box of Dreams (Peru): In a rural community outside Lima, a young boy escapes from home to become a story box artisan, a sophisticated craft practiced only by a select group of families who have passed their skills down over generations.

Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio is an organizational psychologist and filmmaker from Peru. He received his BSC and MSC from the London School of Economics and Political Science and attended film directing workshops at the London Film Academy. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film El Acompañante (The Companion), which played at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals around the world including Rotterdam International Film Festival, La Habana, Palm Springs, Miami, Cork, Leeds, Atlanta, Indie Lisboa, Nashville, and Maryland, among others.

 

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The narrative The Lobbyists and the documentary (T)ERROR  were tonight announced the winners of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) 10th Annual Tribeca All Access (TAA) Creative Promise Awards.  Each project received $10,000 to help bring their films to completion.  The Institute also announced this year’s TAA alumni grants and fellowships during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The grants, all presented at tonight’s event, total over $90,000 in funds. 

This year’s Tribeca All Access Creative Promise winners were:

Narrative Award Winner:
The Lobbyists
A conman with no past and a former CIA agent join forces to “lobby” politicians by blackmailing them into voting for progressive legislation.
Directed by Terence Nance; Produced by Chanelle Pearson and Andrew Corkin

Documentary Award Winner: 
(T)ERROR
(T)ERROR captures the spectacular unraveling of an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation, and the dramatic aftermath that occurs when the target of the investigation realizes that a government informant is setting him up.
Directed & Produced by Lyric R Cabral and David F Sutcliffe

Special Jury Mention (Documentary):
Time is Illmatic
Time Is Illmatic is a feature length documentary film, told through the lens of rapper NAS and his bluesman father OLU DARA, which deconstructs
Nas’ indelible rap album Illmatic and the socio-economic and cultural conditions that inspired it.
Directed and Produced by One9; Produced by Erik Parker

TAA’s programming and support for alumni this year included grants and fellowships for past TAA projects in development or new works by program alumni. The following grant recipients were announced:

TAA Alumni Documentary Grants

Turn it Around
Despite the odds being stacked against them, Joe, Deprece, and Sergio undertake the arduous process of becoming classroom teachers with grace and courage by enrolling in an ambitious experiment in public education in California. Hoping to revitalize a system and a society that has only ever failed them, Joe, Deprece, and Sergio seek to break the cycle of high teacher turnover and outsider teachers in their communities’ schools.
Produced and Directed by Dawn Valadez; Produced by Katherine Saviskas

Untitled Colorado Documentary
The film follows a landmark case in Colorado, where a 6-year-old male-to-female transgender girl is banned from using the girls’ bathroom at her elementary school.
Produced and Directed by Eric Juhola; Produced by Jeremy and Randy Stulberg; Edited by Jeremy Stulberg

TAA Alumni Feature Narrative Awards

A Pebble of Love in the Shoe of My Life
An anti-coming of age drama about a young couple figuring out love and loyalty as they organize a rally in support of immigrant rights.
Written and Directed by Hossein Keshavarz; Produced by Chad Burris

Untitled Colombia Project
A story following three women whose interlocking stories shed light on the horrific reality of sexual assault in the context of Colombia’s decades long armed conflict.
Written and Directed by Paola Mendoza; Written by Gloria La Morte; Produced by Joseph La Morte and Liz Manne

TAA On-Track Grants
Grants to further assist TAA alumni with the completion of their past TAA project or further the development of a new work-in-progress.

Evolution of a Criminal (Documentary)
Ten years after robbing a Bank of America, filmmaker Darius Monroe returns home to examine how his actions affected the lives of family, friends… and victims.
Directed by Darius Clark Monroe; Produced by Jen Gatien; Executive Produced by Spike Lee

Los Valientes (Narrative)
Struggling to find work and recover from a break-up, Felix, a gay and undocumented Mexican, leaves San Francisco for a small town in Pennsylvania where his undocumented sister promises steady work and the comfort of family.  Once there, alienated by the town’s newly proposed anti-immigration law and forced into silence around his sexuality, Felix finds unexpected solace in the company of one person, his sister’s husband.
Directed and written by Aurora Guerrero

TAA Adrienne Shelly Foundation Filmmaker Grant
A grant to aid in the advancement of talented women filmmakers to further their projects towards completion or distribution.

Afia Nathaniel – Director/Writer/Producer
Dukhtar (based on her TAA screenplay formerly “Neither the Veil nor the Four Walls”)
A mother goes on an extraordinary journey to save her ten year old daughter from an arranged marriage.

TAA Marketing & Web Fellowship
A collaboration between TAA and Push Creative, a full service branding agency, to encourage audience development – including a newly-designed website.

Oscar’s Comeback
Through the lens of an annual mom-and-pop film festival in rural South Dakota –beleaguered amidst escalating racial and economic tensions — witness an 8-year behind-the-scenes chronicle of how worlds collide for a motley band of dreamers, as their dwindling all-white small-town champions their unsung black ‘native son’: early 1900s homesteader-turned-unlikely-film-pioneer, Oscar Micheaux — known to some as the “Godfather of Independent Cinema.”
Directed and Produced by Lisa Collins and Mark Schwartzburt

Tribeca Hacks TAA/Games 4 Change

Tribeca Hacks Games 
In partnership with Games 4 Change, TAA filmmakers will be selected to participate in a special game-design workshop during the Games for Change Festival in June as part of the Tribeca Hacks initiative.

TAA Packaging the Pitch Grants
Grants to support alumni who need assistance developing a visual-based pitch for their project (i.e. trailer, location shooting, sample scene).

The Odyssey of Al Sharpton (Documentary)
Al Sharpton tells his story and takes us on a journey through his colorful  life – and through that journey, the viewer experiences the shifting river of American race relations and how racial politics have transformed. 
Produced and Directed by Yoruba Richen

Hound Dog (Narrative)
A 50’s heartthrob plays Russian Roulette, killing himself and the crossover dreams of R&B mogul Don Robey.  Police investigate the tragedy exposing adultery, betrayal, libel, larceny and other vices leaving the police and fans asking, “who killed Johnny Ace?”
Written and Directed by Crayton Robey; Written and Produced by Letitia Guillory

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Newton’s Laws of Emotion was just announced as the winner of the first ever Tribeca Film Institute (TFI)Sloan Filmmaker Prize. The project will receive a $10,000 cash prize that will be used to help bring the film closer to completion. 

Newton’s Laws of Emotion (Eugene Ramos, Screenwriter; Andeep Singh, Producer) follows a young Isaac Newton as he pursues the affections of a headstrong princess and seeks to uncover the principles of love using his new system of mathematics. However, his equations start to break down when her former lover enters the scene.

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The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) announced the award winners for the TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund, Heineken VOCES and TFI/WorldView Partnership grants at a celebration for Latin American filmmakers during the Tribeca Film Festival. The funds, totaling $130,000, support innovative Latin American film and video artists to help them explore stories reflecting diverse cultures and gain exposure in the film industry. 

Bloomberg, the new presenting sponsor of the TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund will provide support that furthers TFI’s commitment to champion Latin American filmmakers.  The partnership will launch in the summer of 2013 with a series of multi-day workshops in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; and Santiago, Chile.   The three Bloomberg Fellows, one from each region, will be awarded a $12,000 grant and an invitation to participate in one of the workshops. 

The following three filmmakers and project have been selected as the 2013 Bloomberg Fellows:

Children/Los Ninos (Chile) (pictured above), Directed by Maite Alberdi Soto; Produced by Clara Taricco – A group of friends with Down’s Syndrome face a new stage in life.  They feel unprepared to grow old. Parents die, they are left alone, and they suffer diseases of the elderly, like Alzheimer’s.

The City Where I’m Getting Old (Brazil) (pictured above), Directed by Marilia Rocha; Produced by Luana Melgaço– At a moment when the Portuguese government publicly recommends that the country’s citizens seek work abroad, a young Portuguese woman, Teresa Pestana heads for the city of Belo Horizonte, one of the major Brazilian state capitals.

Someone Else’s Secret  (Mexico) (pictured above), Written and Directed by Hector Barrios; Written and Produced by Denisse Quintero – Through a Private Detective’s life and work, Someone Else’s Secret follows a real case of distrust and portraits the honest communication crisis prevailing in modern societies. On a double espionage, the documentary reveals the Detective’s secrets.

The following four films are winners of this year’s TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund: 

The Girl Behind the Camera (Argentina) (pictured above), Directed and Produced by Paula Schargorodsky –  A 35 year old woman has chronicled the last10 years of her life on film. Five boyfriends and two wedding proposals later she remains single. The Girl Behind the Camera is a humorous, intimate investigation on a generation of unsettled women that poses a question about the choices we make (or don’t make) in life.

Missed Days/Los Dias No Vuelven (Mexico) (pictured above), Produced and Directed by Raul Cuesta; Written by Fernando del Razo – Disappointed over a premature retirement from professional tennis and never fulfilling his deceased father’s dreams, Enrique hopes the birth of his first child will bring him redemption.

The Naptime (Mexico) (pictured above), Written, Produced and Directed by Carolina Platt – A visual elegy through the eyes of the director that follows how families learn to live with the loss of a child

Solitude Square/Plaza de la Soledad (Mexico) (pictured above), Directed by Maya Goded; Produced by Martha Sosa Elizondo; Co-Produced by Iris Lammertsma – Two aged prostitutes see themselves forced to contemplate their lives and confront their issues so they can live out the remainder of their days with dignity and hope.

The winners of the Heineken VOCES grants are:

Heineken VOCES Award for Documentary

Man of the Monkey (pictured above), Directed by David Romberg – Intrigued by the tale of a scary man living in isolation with his chimpanzee wife, David Romberg travels to his childhood home on Ilha Grande, Brazil to find him, only to discover that the tale pales in comparison to what he uncovers. 

Heineken VOCES Award for Narrative

Nobody is Watching, Written, Directed, Co-Produced by Julia Solomonoff, Written by Martina Broner, Co-Produced by Maria Arida – Guille, an out of work actor who knew success in Argentina, navigates life as an immigrant on the fringes of New York and wrestles to find a place he can call home. 

An additional three development grants of $10,000 will be awarded to filmmaking teams based in Latin America and the Caribbean through the TFI/WorldView Partnership, a collaboration between the Tribeca Film Institute and CBA WorldView. 

The winners of the TFI/WorldView Partnership grants are:

Growing in Oil (Venezuela) (pictured above), Written and Directed by Anabel Rodríguez Ríos – A story following the children of Congo Mirador as they survive the disappearance of their village, which is located in Lake Maracaibo, the largest oil field of Latin America.  As a consequence of the oil industry, soil levels are changing and the village will turn into a swamp. 

Night Inside Me (Bolivia) (pictured above), Directed by Sergio Estrada; Produced by Valeria Ponce – Primo is the leader of one of the most effective and experienced mining crews, yet not one of the luckiest. The crew’s routine changes the day Primo’s son decides to join them. When night falls in the mine…  Everyone is left inside.

Swimming on Dry Land (Jamaica) (pictured above), Produced and Directed by Michelle Serieux – Jamaica is a land of many contradictions. The country that created Bob Marley and gave the world Rastafari, Reggae Music and “One Love,” has also produced a culture that is very intolerant of diversity.

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Last night Ava DuVernay was announced the winner of the inaugural Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) inaugural Heineken Affinity Award as the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival continues in downtown Manhattan, New York City. DuVernay was chosen as the winner by public vote on a website dedicated to the Heineken Affinity Award. The award is given to an African-American filmmaker (age 21 and over) to empower and encourage them to continue to craft stories through film.  In addition to a $20,000 cash prize awarded at the event, DuVernay will receive year round support and professional development from TFI for her future projects.

Who is Ava DuVernay?   DuVernay of Los Angeles won the Best Director Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film, Middle of Nowhere (pictured above). She also directed the critically-acclaimed dramatic feature I Will Follow, and the music documentaries This is the Life and My Mic Sounds Nice.  Her upcoming project Part of the Sky, is currently in development.  She is also the founder of the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM).

In addition to DuVernay, the finalists were Andrew Dosunmu, Cheryl Dunye, Nelson George, Kahlil Joseph, Victoria Mahoney, Terence Nance, Akosua Adoma Owuso, Yvonne Welbon, and Ross Williams. Each of the filmmakers will receive a $1,000 grant.

http://youtu.be/jT19sV9CkGQ

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Eight films being produced in the San Francisco Bay Area will receive a total of $340,000 in funding to help with their next stage of production from San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation (KRF).  SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants are awarded twice annually to filmmakers for narrative feature films that will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community.

The winners include Jonas Carpignano, writer/director – A Chjana; Grainger David, writer/director – Nocturne; Ian Hendrie and Jyson McLean, co-writers/directors/producers – Mercy Road; Maryam Keshavarz and Paolo Marinou-Blanco, cowriters – The Last Harem; Richard Levien, writer/director and Chad Burris, producer – La Migra; Tommy Oliver, writer/director/producer – 1982; Vendela Vida, cowriter and Eva Weber, cowriter/director – Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name; and Josef Wladyka, cowriter/director – Manos Sucias.

Past SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant winners include Short Term 12, Destin Daniel Cretton’s sophomore feature, which won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013; Ryan Coogler’s debut feature Fruitvale, which won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013; and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012, earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and became an indie box office smash. 

WINNERS
Jonas Carpignano, writer/director – A Chjana – $45,000 for preproduction
After leaving his native Burkina Faso, Ayiva makes the perilous journey across the Sahara and Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe. Once in Italy, he must balance his desire to provide for his family in Africa with the intolerance and harsh working conditions he finds in his newly claimed home.

Jonas Caripgnano is an Italian-American filmmaker based in Rome and Brooklyn. His short films have played at SXSW, New Directors/New Films and Venice, where his film A Chjana won the Controcampo Award for best short. Carpignano recently completed the Sundance Writing and Directing Labs for the feature-length version of A Chjana, and was recently named one ofFilmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. He is currently an MFA candidate at NYU Tisch, where he won the Martin Scorsese Young Filmmakers Award. He is also the recipient of the Mahindra Award at Sundance.

Grainger David, writer/director – Nocturne (working title) – $35,000 for screenwriting
Nocturne is the story of a white South Carolina cop on the verge of retirement who accidentally kills a young black teenager he suspects of a recent robbery and murder. In a moment of extreme weakness, he hides the boy’s body in a woodshed-only to return a day later to discover it has disappeared.

Grainger David is a director from Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina. His NYU Grad Film thesis The Chair was the only American short film nominated for the Palme D’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The Chair also won Jury Prizes at the SXSW, Los Angeles, and Hollyshorts Film Festivals, and has screened at major festivals around the world, including Telluride, Hamptons and the 63rd Berlinale. David has been awarded grants from the Tribeca Film Institute, the Sloan Foundation, the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. 

Ian Hendrie and Jyson McLean, co-writers/directors/producers – Mercy Road – $40,000 for development
Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the political and spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife as she turns from a peaceful pro-life activist to an underground militant willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.

Ian Hendrie is a San Francisco-based filmmaker and the cofounder of Fantoma, a production company and independent DVD label which has been releasing premium edition DVDs of films by such famed auteurs as Francis Ford Coppola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang, Kenneth Anger and Alex Cox, among others, since 1999. Hendrie and his filmmaking partner Jyson McLean are proud and grateful recipients of a Fall 2011 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant, SFFS FilmHouse residents, alumni of the 2013 Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and finalists for the upcoming Sundance Directors Lab for Mercy Road.

Co-writer/director/producer Jyson McLean began making short films in high school. He attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His commercials and music videos, which have aired nationally and overseas, include spots for Bud Light, Career Builder, and Quaker Oats. He has won the ITVA PEER award three years in a row, and has worked with numerous award winning advertising agencies including DDB Los Angeles, BBDO London and Fred & Farid, Paris. He is currently signed at Contagious LA and Magali Films, Paris for commercial representation in America and Europe respectively.

Maryam Keshavarz and Paolo Marinou-Blanco, cowriters – The Last Harem – $35,000 for screenwriting
The Last Harem follows the battle between Jayran, a young musician girl, and Malik Jahan, the mother of the newly-ascended boy-king, for the affection of the new monarch and control of the palace’s extensive harem. Whoever wins becomes the most powerful woman in the Persian empire…

Maryam Keshavarz received her MFA from NYU/Tisch in film direction and has been making award-winning films for 11 years. Keshavarz’s first narrative feature Circumstance premiered to overwhelming critical acclaim at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and garnered the coveted Sundance Audience Award, leading to Keshavarz’s inclusion in Deadline’s 2011 Directors to Watch. Keshavarz’s newest film project The Last Harem, originally developed at the Cine Qua Non Lab, won the prestigious SFFS/Hearst Screenwriting Grant and her multimedia installation work Between Sight and Desire: Imagining the Muslim Woman won a multi-year grant from the Creative Capital Fund.

Born in New York and raised in China, South Africa and Portugal, Paolo Marinou-Blanco studied philosophy and theater before pursuing an MFA in Filmmaking at NYU-Tisch. In 2007 he won funding from the Portuguese Film Institute to write and direct his first feature, Goodnight Irene, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to much critical acclaim, went on to travel to dozens of international festivals and was theatrically released in Europe in 2008. Marinou-Blanco now works in the U.S., Europe and Brazil as a screenwriter; The Last Harem is his first collaboration with writer/director Maryam Keshavarz.

Richard Levien, writer/director and Chad Burris, producer – La Migra – $20,000 for development
Twelve-year-old Itan’s life in San Francisco is turned upside down when she comes home from school to find her apartment ransacked and her mother missing. Suddenly she must rely on her estranged uncle Eevencio, who she suspects is a criminal. They cross the country in Eevencio’s dilapidated truck, through the labyrinth of immigration detention, trying to find Itan’s mother and prevent her from being deported.

Richard Levien has been writing, directing and editing award-winning films for 8 years. Levien’s short film Immersion, about a ten-year-old boy from Mexico who speaks no English and struggles to fit in at his new school in the U.S., premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2009. Immersion won the “No Violence” award at the Ann Arbor film festival, and the Best Bay Area short film award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2009 Levien won the inaugural San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant, for screenwriting on La Migra. 

Films that Chad Burris produced and executive produced have screened at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, New Directors/New Films, Toronto, Cannes and Venice. His latest film as producer, Aurora Guerrero’s Mosquita y Mari, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 and was nominated for a 2013 Independent Spirit Award. Burris executive produced the Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, Famke Janssen’s directorial debut Bringing Up Bobby and Nick Cassavetes’Yellow. He was the last recipient of the Mark Silverman Award for New Producers from the Sundance Institute in 2007.

Tommy Oliver, writer/director/producer – 1982 – $85,000 for postproduction
Semi-autobiographical and inspired by true events, 1982 tells the story of a black father whose wife succumbs to a crack cocaine addiction and his efforts to shield his young daughter from the ill effects of having a drug-addicted mother. Set at the very onset of the crack epidemic, the film is about a father doing whatever he can to protect his family.

Tommy Oliver, producer of Kinyarwanda, a film Roger Ebert named to his top 10 films of 2011, is a strong believer in the transformative power of film. As a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where he double majored in Economics and Digital Media, he developed a keen understanding for business as a whole. In addition to the 2011 Sundance World Cinema Audience Award-winning Kinyarwanda, Oliver has produced three films, including his directorial debut 1982. 

Vendela Vida, cowriter and Eva Weber, cowriter/director – Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name – $35,000 for screenwriting
28-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father’s funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees New York and travels to the Artic Circle to find her real father, but instead is reunited with her mother who abandoned her when Clarissa was only 14.

Vendela Vida cowrote (with Dave Eggers) the script for Away We Go, which was directed by Sam Mendes and released by Focus Features in 2009. Her book Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was awarded the Kate Chopin Award. In 2013 Vida and Eva Weber attended the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters’ Lab where they worked on the script for Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name; they also received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award to further develop the project. 

Eva Weber’s short documentary Reindeer is a lyrical and haunting portrait of reindeer herding in Lapland. The film screened at LAFF, Telluride, AFI Fest and Sundance, with upcoming screenings at Sundance London and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Weber’s multi-award-winning film The Solitary Life of Cranes was selected as one of the top five films of the year inSight & Sound magazine’s annual film review. Other films include The Intimacy of Strangers, Steel Homes, City of Cranes, and Black Out.

Josef Wladyka, cowriter/director – Manos Sucias – $45,000 for production
A desperate fisherman and a naive young man embark on a dangerous journey trafficking drugs up the Pacific coast of Colombia. Hidden beneath the waves, they tow a narco-torpedo filled with millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Together they must brave the war-torn region while navigating the growing tension between them.

Josef Kubota Wladyka fell in love with filmmaking in high school. Even while pursing a B.S. in Finance he continued to make short films. When Wladyka returned to school for his MFA in Film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the quality of his first year work earned him a prestigious Faculty Fellowship Award. His short films, commercials, and screenplays also garnered the attention of director Spike Lee who named him recipient of the 2010 Spike Lee Fellowship Award, providing research funds and mentorship for his first feature film. Manos Sucias is his feature film debut.

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The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) announced the four projects that will receive financial and creative support from the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) Sloan Filmmaker Fund.  The projects will be awarded a total of $140,000 and will be recognized at the annual Tribeca Film Festival, taking place April 17-28, 2013.  The winning films are: 2030, Newton’s Laws of Emotion, Oldest Man Alive and The Doctor.

The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund bestows grants to narrative film projects that dramatize science and technology themes in film or that portray scientists, engineers, or mathematicians in prominent character roles. Grant recipients also receive year-round mentorship from science experts and members of the film industry in order to complete their projects. 

Selected projects for funding:

2030
In a near future Vietnam where seawater has buried a large part of the land and cultivation has to be done on floating farms, a strong-willed woman has to make a critical decision about her ex-lover, a geneticist who could be her husband’s murderer.  Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo (Screenwriter, Director), Bao Nguyen (Producer)

Newton’s Laws of Emotion
As a young Isaac Newton pursues the affections of a headstrong princess, he seeks to uncover the principles of love using his new system of mathematics. However, his equations start to break down when her former lover enters the scene.  Eugene Ramos (Screenwriter), Andeep Singh (producer)

Oldest Man Alive
A suicidal 88-year-old inventor finds a reason to live in the young Romanian woman who saves him from drowning. But when she moves into his Manhattan townhouse, it upsets his son and daughter-in-law, who have waited decades to inherit the multi-million dollar dwelling. Antonio Tibaldi (Screenwriter, Director), Ryan Brown (Screenwriter)

The Doctor
Salim, a disgraced young doctor from India, will do anything to get back into medicine. But when he takes a job at an illegal clinic in New York, he finds more danger than redemption.  Musa Syeed (Screenwriter, Director), Nicholas Bruckman (Producer)

The Sloan Foundation and TFI will present a Sloan 20^th anniversary retrospective screening of the film And the Band Played On followed by a panel that explores the science of AIDS through the arts and features prominent figures in film and science. The panel will examine the science of AIDS and the social politics surrounding the AIDS epidemic from the 1980’s until the present, and analyze how the AIDS crisis has inspired storytelling that engages scientists, artists and politicians as part of “Tribeca Talks: After the Movie.”

And the Band Played On – Sloan Retrospective Screening and Panel 

[caption id="attachment_3471" align="alignnone" width="550"]And the Band Played On[/caption]

Saturday, April 27 at SVA Theater, 3:30 p.m.

Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, And the Band Played On premiered at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early ‘90s.  The film examines the facts surrounding the deadly disease and debunks many of its myths.  The film won three Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Made for Television Movie.  Topping the incredible ensemble cast is Matthew Modine, who received Emmy and Golden Globe-nominations for his poignant portrayal of a doctor who heads an American research team. 

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[caption id="attachment_3339" align="alignnone" width="550"]Recent SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant winners include Short Term 12, Destin Daniel Cretton’s sophomore feature which just won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013[/caption]

The 12 finalists were announced for the latest round of San Francisco Film Society / Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grants; more than $300,000 will be awarded to one or more narrative feature films at any stage of production. Winners of the spring 2013 SFFS/KRF Grants will be announced in mid-April. 

Recent SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant winners include Short Term 12, Destin Daniel Cretton’s sophomore feature which just won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013; Ryan Coogler’s debut feature Fruitvale, which won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013; and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012, earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and became an indie box office smash.

FINALISTS
Rod Blackhurst, director and Josh Murphy, producer – North (production)
Rack is a 38-year-old recently released ex-convict, struggling with his return to a neglectful society. Emotionally discarded by his family and caught in a flawed parole system, he embarks on a bicycle journey to northern California to find Rebecca, the girl he left behind. With his criminal past threatening to resurface at every turn, Rack discovers what it means to be truly free and how fragile his newly gained freedom can be.

Jonas Carpignano, writer/director – A Chjana (preproduction)
After leaving his native Burkina Faso, Ayiva makes the perilous journey across the Sahara and Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe. Once in Italy, he must balance his desire to provide for his family in Africa with the intolerance and harsh working conditions he finds in his newly claimed home.

Grainger David, writer/director – Nocturne (working title) (screenwriting)
Nocturne is the story of a white South Carolina cop on the verge of retirement who accidentally kills a young black teenager he suspects of a recent robbery and murder. In a moment of extreme weakness, he hides the boy’s body in a woodshed-only to return a day later to discover it has disappeared.

Ian Hendrie and Jyson McLean, co-writers/directors/producers – Mercy Road(development)
Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the political and spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife as she turns from a peaceful pro-life activist to an underground militant willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.

Dan Kern, writer/director and Jay Van Hoy, producer – Relapse(screenwriting)
Relapse is a sci-fi thriller about an amnesia patient accused of murder who goes on the run in an attempt to prove his innocence and save the woman he loves.

Maryam Keshavarz and Paolo Marinou-Blanco, cowriters – The Last Harem(screenwriting)
The Last Harem follows the battle between Jayran, a young musician girl, and Malik Jahan, the mother of the newly-ascended boy-king, for the affection of the new monarch and control of the palace’s extensive harem. Whoever wins becomes the most powerful woman in the Persian empire…

Richard Levien, writer/director and Chad Burris, producer – La Migra(development)
Twelve-year-old Itan’s life in San Francisco is turned upside down when she comes home from school to find her apartment ransacked and her mother missing. Suddenly she must rely on her estranged uncle Eevencio, who she suspects is a criminal. They cross the country in Eevencio’s dilapidated truck, through the labyrinth of immigration detention, trying to find Itan’s mother and prevent her from being deported.

Zeresenay Mehari, writer/director and Leelai Demoz, producer – Dare(postproduction)
Dare is the story of a young lawyer who operates under the government’s radar until one young girl’s legal case exposes everything and threatens the survival of her work and life.  

Tommy Oliver, writer/director/producer – 1982 (postproduction)
Semi-autobiographical and inspired by true events, 1982 tells the story of a black father whose wife succumbs to a crack cocaine addiction and his efforts to shield his young daughter from the ill effects of having a drug-addicted mother. Set at the very onset of the crack epidemic, the film is about a father doing whatever he can to protect his family.

Vendela Vida, cowriter and Eva Weber, cowriter/director – Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (screenwriting)
28-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father’s funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees New York and travels to the Artic Circle to find her real father, but instead is reunited with her mother who abandoned her when Clarissa was only 14.

Caroline von Kuhn, producer – The Fixer (development)
An Afghan journalist is exiled from his war-torn country to a small bohemian community in Northern California. When he attempts to turn his menial job on the local police blotter into “Afghan-style” coverage of local crime, he gets drawn into the backwoods of this small town — a shadow Northern California where sex is casual, true friendship is hard to come by and an unfamiliar form of violence emerges all around him.

Josef Wladyka, cowriter/director – Manos Sucias (production)
A desperate fisherman and a naive young man embark on a dangerous journey trafficking drugs up the Pacific coast of Colombia. Hidden beneath the waves, they tow a narco-torpedo filled with millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Together they must brave the war-torn region while navigating the growing tension between them.

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The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the program for the second annual TFI INTERACTIVE daylong conference at the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF). Made possible by support from the Ford Foundation, TFI INTERACTIVE, which launched at last year’s TFF, will assemble the brightest thinkers and innovators from the worlds of film, media, gaming, technology and society to explore storytelling in digital age through an all-day forum on Saturday, April 20.

Through a full day of panels and presentations, thought leaders will share their insights with TFF attendees and inspire content creators to rethink paradigms. The day will explore the digital media ecosystem and the tools and trends that are changing the art of business and film. Conversations will range from the rich narratives found in adventure games led by Kill Screen co-founder Jamin Warren, to a look at why telling stories is so important and advantageous to society, to an examination of how code and maker culture can give artists and creators a rich new digital palette to work with. The event will take place from 9:30 am – 5pm at the IAC Building and is open to all TFF badge holders and invited guests. Attendees can participate and share comments via Twitter hashtag #TFII.

“At TFI INTERACTIVE, we will weave our way from hacking to maker culture, and from games to web docs as we explore the rapidly evolving field of transmedia through a number of project case studies,” said Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at the Tribeca Film Institute. “Last year we looked at the media industry with a wide lens to see how different fields apply theories of interactivity. So much has evolved in the last 12 months and this year’s program seeks to highlight the creators and projects experimenting with audience involvement and immersive spaces. It’s time for more big ideas, inspiring projects and amazing people.”

The second annual TFI INTERACTIVE conference joins a range of other TFF and TFI initiatives that bridge filmmaking and technology, including TFF’s Storyscapes – a juried, multi-platform transmedia section created in collaboration with BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Gin that will launch at the 2013 Festival along with the Bombay Sapphire Award for Transmedia, and the annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards; as well as year-round programming like the Future of Film discussion series; Tribeca Hacks, a nationwide series of workshops that brings together content creators with technology experts to increase understanding in the field of interactive storytelling; the Tribeca Online Festival; and the TFI New Media Fund, which, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, provides funding and support to non-fiction, social issue media projects that integrate film with content across media platforms.

TFI INTERACTIVE – PROGRAM & SCHEDULE:

9:50 a.m. – Opening remarks

Beth Janson, executive director of the Tribeca Film Institute

10 a.m. – KEYNOTE: THE CLOUD FILM MAKING MANIFESTO

Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards

Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and recipient of 50
 awards including one of Tribeca’s Disruptive Innovation Awards will present a Live “Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto” where she will describe her new participatory way of making films collaboratively with people all over the world.  She has released 3 of these films to date, customized for free for nearly 500 nonprofits worldwide (part of the Cloud Filmmaking concept), and the last one, Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks, was just selected by the US State Department as one of the films to represent America in the 2013-14 American Film Showcase. In this keynote she will share how she makes these films as well as premiere their latest short film in the series, The Science of Character.

10:40 a.m. – A WISH FOR THE FUTURE

Lance Weiler, filmmaker and innovator
Wish For The Future is a creative platform to empower everyone to shape the world around them and create a better future now. Lance Weiler is known as an interactive media trailblazer and for TFI Interactive will be taking the digital into physical throughout the event with the help of the audience.

11a.m. – PANEL: ARE ADVENTURE GAMES THE NEW TELEVISION?

Moderated by Jamin Warren, co-founder of Kill Screen; confirmed panelists include Sarah Elmaleh (Kill Screen)
Think you know everything about narrative? When it comes to gaming you may be surprised. Adventure games are maturing and increasingly seen as a perfect narrative complement to the rich storytelling found on television. Jamin Warren of Kill Screen talks with panelists about the future of gaming and the evolution of narrative.

11:30 a.m. – NFB INTERACTIVE SINCE BEAR 71

Loc Dao, head of digital content and strategy for English Programming at the National Film Board of Canada
Loc Dao will take attendees through the projects NFB Interactive has been working on since the smash hit Bear 71. They are about to do it again with Circa 1948 by Stan Douglas, a 3D historical augmented reality app that captures the stories and architecture of a transitional post-war era Canada. Get a sneak peak of this exciting project by a world-renowned artist.

11:50 a.m. – STORY+WONDER

Jason Silva, filmmaker and futurist

Called a “Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age”, Jason Silva is known as an innovator and disruptor.  He definitely breaks the traditional media mould with his wide-ranging curiosity and infectious enthusiasm. His non commercial short films have been seen millions of times online and Jason has spoken at TEDGlobal and keynoted events for IBM, INTEL, Microsoft and SXSW.. In this 20 minute inspirational talk he will touch upon some of the highlights of his past work, the pace of technological disruption, and reflect on why telling stories is so important to us. Jason can be seen this April as the host of National Geographic Channel’s new series Brain Games.

12:10 p.m. – LOCALORE SESSION 1
Localore, an independent producer-driven public media production from AIR, Inc, has birthed a set of inspiring transmedia projects that open our imaginations to the new possibilities of “full spectrum storytelling.” Some of the most meaningful and powerful projects happen on our doorsteps. Discover ten of them.

·AUSTIN MUSIC MAP – Uncovering Austin’s surprisingly diverse sonic subculture in tandem with fans and performers. 

·REINVENTION STORIES – Reinvention offers residents of Dayton a chance to reflect on how they’re remaking their lives and community. 

·PLANET TAKEOUT – Planet Takeout solicits perspectives from both sides of the counter on how Chinese carryouts have become an unlikely crossroads of community.

·HEAR HERE – Hear Here seeks residents’ most resonant place-based stories enabled in art by a custom-built booth inspiring mobile listening and contributions

·BLACK GOLD BOOM – Black Gold Boom traverses the oil rigs, man camps, and crossroads of North Dakota’s oil rush through a series of lively multimedia pieces.

12:40 p.m. – A WEB-DOCUMENTARY MANIFESTO

Jesse Shapins, CEO/co-founder of Zeega
Zeega has quickly enabled film makers across the world to create non-linear, online stories without the need for a degree in computer programming. In this 10-minute presentation, Jesse Shapins will lay out a collaborative manifesto for web-documentary. 

12:50 p.m. – TFI NEW MEDIA FUND PRESENTS THE 2013 GRANTEES – Session 1

[caption id="attachment_3344" align="alignnone" width="550"]HOLLOW[/caption]

·HOLLOW – Elaine Mcmillion: Like many post-industrial communities across the country, McDowell County, W. Va., is struggling to survive. Through Hollow, the Appalachian community represents themselves and their challenges as they see fit. Hollow combines video portraits, interactive data visualizations, social media and user-generated content delivered on an HTML5 website to support engagement and inspire change.

[caption id="attachment_3345" align="alignnone" width="550"]QUESTION BRIDGE[/caption]

·QUESTION BRIDGE: BLACK MALES – Hank Willis Thomas: A transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine black male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange facilitated through strategic digital channels, diverse members of this “demographic” bridges economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions.

[caption id="attachment_3346" align="alignnone" width="550"]IMMIGRANT NATION[/caption]

·IMMIGRANT NATION – Theo Rigby: Nearly every person in the U.S. has an immigration journey — be it their own or the voyage of a relative in the past. As the topic of immigration divides communities across the country, our shared history can create commonality between recent immigrants and those whose families have lived in the U.S. for generations. Immigrant Nation will use documentary film, user-generated storytelling, and data visualization to provide a social space for communities to share and connect with their immigrant histories.

1:00-2:00 p.m. – LUNCH

2:00 p.m. – TFI NEW MEDIA FUND PRESENTS THE 2013 GRANTEES – Session 2

[caption id="attachment_3347" align="alignnone" width="550"]ALMA, A TALE OF VIOLENCE[/caption]

·ALMA – Alexandre Brachet: For five years, Alma has been a member of one of Guatemala’s most brutal gangs, the Maras. “Alma, a tale of violence” is a cross-platform project based on her life. In a moving confession, Alma tells her story through a unique interactive web/tablet concept in which the viewer moves between two screen levels, a face-to-face experience and a visual evocation of Alma’s recollections.

[caption id="attachment_3348" align="alignnone" width="550"]NEW DAY NEW STANDARD[/caption]

·NEW DAY NEW STANDARD – Marisa Jahn: A public art interactive hotline that informs nannies, housekeepers, elder caregivers, and their employers about New York’s landmark Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, passed in November 2010. Part I features episodes combining equal parts advice and humor; Part II features an expanded storytelling initiative for callers to record and share their own messages.

2:10 p.m. – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY

Caspar Sonnen, curator, IDFA DocLab

In 2008 most of our attentions were turned to the impending doom of Wall Street. Caspar, however, was out creating the IDFA DocLab and setting forth on a journey that would lead the way for the exhibition of interactive documentary. Caspar will look at the past, present and the future of this work with an unusually broad base of experience to draw from.

2:30 p.m. – SHARE THIS, YOUR STORY, BUT SOCIAL

Deanna Zandt, co-founder and partner of Lux Digital

Deanna Zandt, media technologist and author of Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking, will show how social change movements take root through collaborative media and how to harness the power of social.

2:40 p.m. – THE AATSINKI SEASON

Jessica Oreck, filmmaker, and Mike Knowlton, co-founder Murmur

Developed during a P.O.V. hackathon this seasonal and episodic online documentary is the companion piece to Aatsinki: The Arctic Cowboys (screening during the Festival). This experiential project lives alongside and supports the feature length documentary.

2:50 p.m. – LOCALORE SESSION 2

·ED ZED OMEGA – Asking the question “what does school accomplish?”

·ISEECHANGE – Flipping the scrip on environmental reporting via a participatory hub

·CURIOUS CITY – Inviting locals to pitch in at newsrooms

·SONIC TRACE – A multiplatform documentary on the experience of Latin American immigrants

·MAKING OF – a musical performance from veteran radio producers The Kitchen Sisters

3:20 p.m. – KICKSTARTING STORYTELLING

Stephanie Pereira, director of art programs at Kickstarter

Stephanie Pereira is a self-confessed make-it-happen kind of person who will explore how the Kickstarter crowd funding platform can be used as a storytelling tool – it’s about the audience as much as it is the money.

3:30 p.m. – PANEL: GLUE IT, CODE IT, TWEAK IT, PLAY IT

Confirmed panelists: Reshma Saujani (Girls Who Code), Sonali Sridhar (Hacker School), Amit Pitaru (Kitchen Table Coders), Adnaan Wasey (P.O.V.)

Maker culture is more than knowing how to code, it is about a state of mind – if you can think it you can probably make it. The theory isn’t that far removed from that moment where you get the idea for a film, the only difference is the next step. This panel explores rapid prototyping and getting your hands dirty to get something made and into the hands of your audience as quickly as possible.

4 p.m. – WELCOME TABLE

Joslyn Barnes, producer

WelcomeTable is a multiplatform project including a visual/auditory installation featuring large-scale photography, video portraits and live data to reveal the people behind the kitchen doors in restaurants across America. Joslyn Barnes will take us through all the elements of the project that shows that eating local is only half the battle.

4:10 p.m. – CLOUDS

James George and Jonathan Minard, media artists

CLOUDS includes interviews with 30 new media artists, curators, designers, and critics, using a super-exciting new 3D cinema format called RGBD which uses a Kinect to create a videogame-like film environment. The creators of CLOUDS will take about the possibilities for creative code and creative filmmaking using their open-source RGBD Toolkit.

4:20 p.m. – PANEL: STORYSCAPES – CREATING IMMERSIVE STORY EXPERIENCES
Moderated by Ingrid Kopp, director of digital initiatives at the Tribeca Film Institute; confirmed panelists include Hugues Sweeney (A Journal of Insomnia), Brent Hoff, Alexander Reben (Robots in Residence), Casey Pugh (Star Wars Uncut), Michael Premo (Sandy Storyline)
Storyscapes is a new section at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013, in collaboration with Bombay Sapphire, celebrating interactive transmedia projects across genres. The creators will talk about their projects and describe the process of bringing work from the web to an immersive, installation space at a film festival.

4:50 p.m. – CLOSING REMARKS

Orlando Bagwell, director of the JustFilms initiative at the Ford Foundation

5:00 p.m. – Cocktail hour

 source: Tribeca Film Institute

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