Ondi Timoner, Ramin Bahrani Among This Year's Tribeca All Access Participants
The eleven works in progress that have been selected for the 2012 Tribeca All Access program range from a year spent with Detroit firefighters to a drama about a gastric bypass, from the story of a teenage runaway to a look at the intersection between LGBT activists and African-American Christian communities.
We're very excited about this year's line-up, which consists of the six narratives and five documentaries listed below, among them the first fiction feature from Ondi Timoner (DIG!, We Live in Public) and the first nonfiction feature from Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Goodbye Solo).
Tribeca All Access exists to support emerging and established filmmakers from underrepresented communities. In addition to a $15,000 grant (given to all films except the one chosen through our partnership with the Canadian Film Centre), each project will receive year-round support, industry connections and additional resources, will be presented at a five-day career-development program during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and is eligible for one of two $10,000 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards.
Documentaries
Untitled Ramin Bahrani Gold Documentary
Directed and produced by Ramin Bahrani, produced by Jason Orans
Set in today’s global recession, which has catapulted gold prices to historic highs, Untitled Ramin Bahrani Gold Documentary explores our centuries-old obsession with gold, and what – if anything – is its intrinsic value. This will be Bahrani’s first documentary project. [Photo: AlkaliSoaps, 2009]
BURN
Directed and produced by Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam
BURN is an action-packed documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of its firefighters, the men and women charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.
Two Children Of The Red Mosque
Directed and produced by Hemal Trivedi, co-directed by Mohammad Naqvi, produced by Whitney Dow and Jonathan Goodman Levitt
Amid suicide bombings and U.S. drone attacks in Northwestern Pakistan, twelve-year-olds Zarina and Talha are pursuing different dreams. After attending madrassahs of the Red Mosque – they make different choices that promise to define their adult lives. Zarina recently escaped the madrassah, and her struggle to attend secular school and avoid marriage stands opposed to Talha’s journey over the next two years. Their stories personalize the hard choices facing modern Pakistanis living in rural areas, where ongoing ideological battles between fundamentalist and moderate Muslims are shaping Pakistan’s future.
Desert Stars
Directed and produced by Raouf Zaki, produced by Frank McDonnell
Desert Stars documents the journey of a man who abandons the world and its desires to seek a relationship with God alone as a monk in the desert, but, in order to save his monastery, he must confront the world again in the midst of the bloody Egyptian revolution.
The New Black
Directed by Yoruba Richen, produced by Yvonne Welbon and Angela Tucker
The New Black is a documentary that uncovers the complicated histories of the African-American and LGBT civil-rights movements.
Narratives
Abigail Harm
Written by Lee Isaac Chung and Samuel Gray Anderson, Produced by Samuel Gray Anderson, Eugene Suen, and Pablo Thomas
Abigail Harm stars legendary actress Amanda Plummer as a woman living in a fictionalized New York City, who, after being granted a wish by a heavenly visitor, asks for love and learns of a spirit who might provide it. Inspired by the Korean folktale "The Woodcutter and the Nymph."
Bypass
Written and Directed by Liliana Greenfield-Sanders, Produced by Amy Basil and Rowen Riley
20 year-old Katie is popular, high-achieving and obese, but all of this is about to change when she undergoes a series of radical gastric and plastic surgeries. Bypass is a modern day twist on Frankenstein in which the protagonist is herself both creator and monster.
I Believe In Unicorns
Written and Directed by Leah Meyerhoff, Executive Produced by Allison Anders, Produced by Heather Rae and Mark G. Mathis, and Co-Produced by Kwesi Collisson
A troubled teenage girl runs away with an older boy only to discover that their new life together is even more dysfunctional than the home she left behind.
Manchild
Written and Directed by Ryan Koo
A talented basketball player at a small Christian school gets nationally ranked and must choose between schools, coaches, and faiths -- all at the age of 13.
Mapplethorpe
Written, Directed and Produced by Ondi Timoner and Produced by Nate Dushku, Miles Levy, and Eliza Dushku
A narrative film based on the extraordinary life and complex character of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from his rise to fame in the 1970s, to his untimely death from AIDS in 1989. James Franco is attached to star as Robert Mapplethorpe. This will be Ondi’s breakout transition from documentary to narrative feature film. [Photo: Self Portrait, 1975, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission]
International
Rhymes For Young Ghouls
Written and Directed by Jeff Barnaby, Produced by John Christou & Aisling Chin-Yee
Rhymes For Young Ghouls is a raucous coming of age tale about Aila, a young Mi’gMaq girl embroiled in the family drug trade who is coping with the suicide of her mother and the recent release of her imprisoned father (selected via our partnership with the CFC).
[Photo at top from The New Black]
