Press materials available hereTHE TRIBECA FESTIVAL BECOMES THE FIRST MAJOR FESTIVAL TO INCLUDE OFFICIAL PODCAST SELECTIONS
The Inaugural Tribeca Podcast Program to Include World Premieres and Discussions with Influential Voices and Creators
Tribeca Podcast Advisory Board Members Include: Jad Abumrad, Alex Blumberg, Conal Byrne, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Sarah Koenig, Tanya Somanader, and Connie Walker
NEW YORK - May 3, 2021 - The 2021 Tribeca Festival, presented by AT&T, announced today that it will welcome podcasts for the first time in the Festival's history. As the first major festival to premiere Official Selection podcasts, Tribeca has once again demonstrated why it is at the forefront of championing all forms of storytelling. The 20th anniversary celebration will take place city-wide June 9-20 and will be the first major film festival to host in person events.
The first-ever Tribeca Podcasts lineup will feature world premieres of fiction and nonfiction stories from some of today's most exciting emerging creators, as well as special events that include live recordings, discussions and more with the most influential names in audio including: Jad Abumard discusses his work on Radiolab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton's America and more with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, Jason Reitman; Ear Hustle, co-founded by bay area artist, Nigel Poor alongside Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams, is the first podcast created and produced in prison and features stories of the daily realities of life inside California's San Quentin State Prison; and the new Apple TV podcast about Siegfried & Roy, produced by Will Manalti and Steven Leckart.
The past few years have seen an explosion in the popularity of podcasts, making this the perfect time to introduce our inaugural Tribeca Podcast Program, said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises and the Tribeca Festival. We look forward to welcoming the creative forces behind this year's most anticipated new programs.
2020 saw so many people seek new forms of entertainment as theaters, sports arenas, and museums had to temporarily close their doors. For so many podcasts became not only a source of entertainment, but also a source of comfort, said Paula Weinstein, Chief Content Officer of Tribeca Enterprises. We're thrilled to launch Tribeca Podcasts at this year's Festival.
From Immersive in 2013, to TV in 2016, Tribeca has always been at the forefront of embracing new modes of cinematic storytelling, said Cara Cusumano, Festival Director and Vice President of Programming for the Tribeca Festival. Now with Tribeca Podcasts, we are once again expanding the scope of our programming to spotlight the innovative creators and stories happening in the audio form.
Tribeca welcomes Audible, Inc. as the first-ever Exclusive Audio Entertainment sponsor of the Tribeca Festival. Audible, Inc. will celebrate the Tribeca creative community and showcase bold creators who are developing innovative, cinematic audio entertainment through Juneteenth programming and the premiere of queer action comedy Audible Original Hot White Heist, produced by Broadway Video and Club Cumming Productions, written, created, and produced by Adam Goldman, directed and produced by Alan Cumming, and starring an ensemble of queer performers including Bowen Yang, Cynthia Nixon, Jane Lynch, and Bianca del Rio.
The Tribeca Podcasts program is curated by Leah Sarbib, Manager, Audio Storytelling, along with the counsel of an advisory board whose members have greatly contributed to and influenced the podcast industry. They include:
Sarah Koenig: Host and co-creator of the groundbreaking Serial podcast, and Executive Producer of Serial Productions.
Jad Abumrad: Host and creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton's America (a collaboration with OSM Audio's Shima Oliaee). Hes been called master of the radio craft for his unique ability to combine cutting edge sound-design, cinematic storytelling, and a personal approach to explaining complex topics-from the stochasticity of tumor cells to the legal underpinnings of the war on terror. He composes much of the music for Radiolab, and has composed music for film, theater and dance. Hes received three Peabody Awards, and the prestigious MacArthur Genius Fellowship.
Nikole Hannah-Jones: Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of The 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomens Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame. She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Investigative Reporting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Alex Blumberg: Co-host of the Spotify podcast How to Save a Planet produced by Gimlet Media, the company behind hit podcasts like The Journal, Homecoming, Stolen: The Search for Jermain and more. Prior to founding Gimlet, Blumberg worked for years in public radio. He is an award-winning radio journalist known for his work as a producer on the wildly popular podcasts This American Life and Planet Money, which he co-founded at NPR. In 2014, he hosted the first season of the Gimlet podcast StartUp, which was about the founding of the company. Blumberg's work has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including the Polk, the duPont-Columbia, and the Peabody. His award-winning documentary on the housing crisi
