TRIBECA FILM INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES 2010 TFI SLOAN FILMMAKER FUND RECIPIENTS April 9th, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Download PDF TRIBECA FILM INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES 2010 TFI SLOAN FILMMAKER FUND RECIPIENTS
$140,000 AWARDED TO SIX PROJECTS THAT INTEGRATE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN FILM
New York, NY (April 9, 2013) TheTribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the films that will receive financial and creative support from the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This year, of 128 applicants, six projects will be awarded a total of $140,000 to help filmmakers both create and distribute their films. In addition, grant recipients will also receive year-round mentorship from science experts and members of the film industry. The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund awards grants to narrative film projects that dramatize science and technology themes in film or that portray scientists, engineers, or mathematicians in prominent character roles.
The winning projects were selected by a committee made up of Julie Goldstein (Producer, Proof), Dr. Martin Chalfie (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University), Dr. Patricia Bath (Opthamalogist and Founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness), Anne Carey (Producer, Adventureland) and Dr. Gabriel Cwilich (Professor of Physics at Yeshiva University).
Doron Weber, Vice President of Programs at the Sloan Foundation, and select committee members will present the awards to winning filmmakers during the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) at the TFI Awards on April 23, 2010. The following projects were selected for funding: The Devil's Teeth, Future Weather, Haber, Map of the Universe, Midnight Sun and Obselidia. The films tell a broad range of stories including a journalist uncovering the truth about great white sharks, a young girl's emotional connection to global warming, the partnership between an astronomer and an eccentric enthusiast, a librarian's chronicling of obsolete things in a changing world, and the complications, both moral and marital, faced by the scientists who developed chemical warfare and the atomic bomb.
For the past nine years at Tribeca, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has made vast contributions to the film community by providing essential funding for works with scientific themes as well as availing filmmakers the opportunity to showcase their work to industry executives, said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Chairman of the Board, TFI. This year, through the Sloan Filmmaker Fund, we are pleased to continue our commitment to developing and promoting projects illustrating the importance of science and technology in cinema.
We are thrilled to join Tribeca for the 9th consecutive year in supporting screenwriters and directors who tackle science and technology themes and characters in innovative ways, stated Doron Weber, Sloan Vice President. The impressive body of work by this year's winners shows us how entertaining and unexpected the world can look when seen through a lens enlivened by scientific insight and understanding.
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 worlds 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 shes 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 cant 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-B chner
Cast Includes: Christian Berkel and Juliane K hler
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: Christopher Eigeman
Produced by Dana Brunetti with his and Kevin Spaceys 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
TFI Sloan Filmmaker Works-In-Progress
In addition to financial and year-round ancillary support, TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund grant recipients will receive exposure to industry executives, financiers and producers during the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) at the invitation-only Sloan Works-In-Progress showcase, a presentation of the grant-winning film projects. The five projects in development will have scenes performed by an esteemed cast, and a clip will be screened from Obselidia, which is receiving distribution support. The Sloan Works-In-Progress showcase will take place on the morning of April 22, and those interested in attending should contact tfisloanfund@tribecafilminstitute.org.
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