TFI Parties Big, Celebrating Filmmakers' Achievements
The mood was triumphant for the Tribeca Film Institute on Friday, April 23rd, as each of our variegated programs got their moment to shine. Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro kicked things off to a packed Union Square Ballroom, allowing each program manager to present their recent work to a star/industry saturated room. Tribeca All Access generated the most suspense, using the event as a platform to announce the recipients of the 2010 Creative Promise Awards. The esteemed jurors, including John Cho, Anika Noni Rose, and Rebecca Camissa, announced the winners with full envelope-opening fanfare. The winners all gave gracious and/or moving speeches, though the most memorable came from the filmmakers behind Peace After Marriage. Echoing the film’s concern with Israeli-Palestinian relations, they vowed to take an important first step towards the peace process by vowing to hit on at as many Jewish women as possible that evening. A complete list of award winners follows…congrats to all of them!
-Alex Kopecky
TRIBECA ALL ACCESS: CREATIVE PROMISE AWARDS
Narrative Section Prize: Ghazi Albuliwi (Director, Screenwriter) and Bandar Albuliwi (Director, Producer) for Peace After Marriage in which a lonely, young Palestinian-American man, addicted to porn and desperate for companionship, agrees to marry an Israeli woman in need of a Green Card, forcing them to re-examine their respective cultural and familial traditions.
Emerging Narrative Section Prize: Lucy Mulloy (Director, Screenwriter) for Una Noche in which Raul from Havana, Cuba is up against heat, sweat, desperation and ninety miles of treacherous ocean before he reaches his dream–Miami.
Screenwriting Section Prize: T.J. Morehouse (Producer, Screenwriter), James Murray (Screenwriter) and Gro Engelstoft (Screenwriter) for Plastic Indian in which John Calf Roper drifts restlessly between dead end jobs, honky-tonks and hard drinking and Tom Badger lives suspended between Cherokee traditions and the modern world. Intertwined by fate, both men seek a meaningful existence.
Documentary Section Prize: Miguel Martinez (Director, Editor) and Jamie Sisley (Director, Co-Producer, Editor) for Farewell, Ferris Wheel which focuses on the small Mexican town of Tlapacoyan. Tlapacoyan is responsible for one third of America’s carnival labor, a fact may make this favorite past time extinct.
TFI SLOAN FUND: SELECTED PROJECTS FOR FUNDING
The Devil’s Teeth – On a forbidding island off the coast of San Francisco, a journalist finds purpose when she joins two scientists in their struggle to protect the world's most misunderstood predator: the great white shark. Based on a true story.
Director: Paul Atkins
Screenwriter: Brett Wagner
Producers: Grace Atkins, Nicolas Gonda
Executive Producer: Terrence Malick
Future Weather – When she's abandoned by her eccentric single mom, a 13-yr-old loner grows fixated on environmental disaster, forcing her and her grandmother to confront each other and the things they can't control.
Director/Screenwriter: Jenny Deller
Producer: Kristin Fairweather
Executive Producers: Jennifer Dubin and Cora Olson
Cast Includes: Perla Haney-Jardine and Lili Taylor
Haber – The true story of how the father of modern agriculture became the father of chemical warfare.
Director/Screenwriter: Daniel Ragussis
Producer: Bogdan Tomassini-Büchner
Cast Includes: Christian Berkel and Juliane Köhler
Map of the Universe – An astronomer is poised to make scientific history in his quest to find an outer solar planet – until his findings are disputed by a prodigiously talented, but eccentric, teenaged star spotter.
Screenwriters: Tim Firth and Dan Futterman
Producers: Nick Barton and Suzanne Mackie
Midnight Sun – The story of Los Alamos and the creation and testing of the atom bomb, as seen through the eyes of two young scientists drafted into service, and their wives.
Director/Screenwriter: Christopher Eigeman
Produced by Dana Brunetti with his and Kevin Spacey's company, Trigger Street Productions.
Cast Includes: Jesse Eisenberg and Kate Bosworth
Obselidia – On his quest to create an encyclopedia of obsolete things, a librarian joins forces with a silent film projectionist, and together they journey to Death Valley to interview a maverick scientist who is predicting the end of the world.
Director/Screenwriter: Diane Bell
Producers: Chris Byrne and Matthew Medlin
Cast Includes: Michael Piccirilli, Gaynor Howe and Frank Hoyt Taylor
CAMERA-TO-CLASSROOM FUND AWARD WINNERS
Bronx Arts Ensemble to improve their partnership with the High School for Violin and Dance (Bronx) by upgrading classroom equipment to industry standard editing hardware and software.
BronxNet to increase the number of students participating in their in-school television production training program to two new Bronx school sites: Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Arts and Celia Cruz High School of Music.
The Children’s Aid Society for the expansion of a digital media arts program that extends school-day learning to the out-of-school time hours for participants in their Hope Leaders Academy, a program that serves youth in transitional housing at Banana Kelly High School (Bronx).
The Educational Video Center (EVC) to enhance their Extended Day Program by reducing student-to-camera ratios, providing training sessions in the Moving Image Blueprint and providing honoraria for guest filmmakers to visit classrooms at seven underserved NYC high schools in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Global Potential to purchase equipment for their all-volunteer GP Film program at the Academy of Urban Planning and International High School at Prospect Heights (Brooklyn), where students prepare for a 6-week service trip to the Dominican Republic.
Grand Street Settlement to launch their CineYouth program at Marte Valle High School, creating a short documentary on the developments of project HAidi (Haitian Aid Initiative).
Magic Box Productions for the extension and presentation of their animation workshop Talking Picture Books: Literacy, Language and Animation which works with English Language Learners (ELL), Former English Language Learners (FELL) and special needs students at PS 139K (Brooklyn).
The Producer’s Project to upgrade the equipment used at their Power of WoW program at Concord High School (Staten Island) to HDV in order to encourage students to distribute their work to festivals.
Puppetry in Practice to provide two teaching artists at PS 217K (Brooklyn) as part of a literacy project using animation to illustrate student study of folk tales.
Reel Works Teen Filmmaking to launch a new residency at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School (Brooklyn) where students will create a documentary focusing on the obesity epidemic.
Romare Bearden Foundation to expand a semester-long collage-making residency at Global Tech Prep Middle School (Manhattan) to include video and animation projects.
Roundabout Theatre Company to work with IS 237-Rachel L. Carson Magnet School for the Arts (Queens) to create their own video art pieces based on the upcoming work Sondheim on Sondheim.
Third World Newsreel to launch a social-issue documentary workshop with City-As-School (Manhattan).
Young Audiences New York to launch a digital media residency with English Language Learners at Cypress Hills Community School (Brooklyn), one of only a few dual language schools in New York City.
Youth Communication to introduce video to their existing journalism program for NYC public school students living in foster care. Please note that, due to the nature of their work, Youth Communication is not working in partnership with a school, as young people in foster care are spread throughout the city and often would not self-identify within a traditional school setting.
