New York, NY – October 28, 2008] The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) has announced the selection of five film projects to receive financial and creative support from its inaugural TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Out of 130 applications submitted, the five projects chosen will receive a total of $110,000. The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund supports narrative projects that tell compelling stories about science and technology or portray scientists, engineers and mathematicians as major characters.
The projects were selected by a committee made up of filmmakers Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream) and Steven Shainberg (Fur, Secretary), producer Caroline Baron (Capote), producer and writer Ann Druyan (Contact), Columbia University Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biological Sciences Darcy B. Kelley, and former Director of the National Institutes of Health, co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Dr. Harold Varmus.
The selected projects selected and funding are:
· Face Value - $40,000
· The Radioactive Boy Scout - $40,000
· Alva - $10,000
· A Noble Affair - $10,000
· Kitty Hawk - $10,000
“The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund affords us an opportunity to provide funding at a crucial time in the industry,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Chairman of the Board, TFI. “These are projects we would like to see brought to fruition and we are happy to be able to support them with funding and our vote of confidence.”
“We are delighted to partner with the Tribeca Film Institute in supporting these five film projects that showcase the tremendous box office appeal of science and technology themes and characters,” said Doron Weber, program director at the Sloan Foundation. “We expect Face Value and Radioactive Boy Scout to be produced within the next year – there is already significant industry interest and attachments – while developing the other promising scripts for the future.”
“It was exciting to read so many interesting and compelling stories with scientific themes,” said Caroline Baron. “It makes you realize how big a role science plays in all of our lives. The committee feels strongly that we have identified projects where Sloan funding would have the greatest impact.”
Films funded tell stories of a screen siren’s unheralded talents as a pioneering inventor, the true story of a boy scout trying to build a nuclear reactor and win his father’s respect, the controversial life of Thomas Edison, Marie Curie’s passionate personal entanglements on the path to the discovery of Radium, and the intense family drama and intrigues behind the extraordinary achievements of the Wright brothers.
Selected projects for funding:
Face Value - The story of screen siren Hedy Lamarr’s little-known vocation as an inventor and scientist. Working with avant-garde composer George Antheil, with whom she had a passionate affair, Lamarr patented “frequency hopping” to aid the US military in WWII. Little did she know, it would become a key component in most current wireless technology.
Director: Amy Redford; Producers: David Baxter, Gretchen Somerfeld;
Screenwriters: Gretchen Somerfeld, Jose Rivera
The Radioactive Boy Scout - Based on the true story of a 16-year-old Boy Scout in Michigan who, in 1995, attempted to build the core of a nuclear reactor in his backyard shed and was shut down by the Federal government.
Director/Screenwriter: Greg Harrison;
Producer: Danielle Renfrew, William Horberg;
Alva - Was Thomas Edison America’s greatest inventor, or a clever thief with a pioneering acumen for marketing? Alva explores the life of Edison from a precocious young rule breaker, to the full blown ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’.
Screenwriters: Alex Lyras, Michael Dorian
A Noble Affair - Marie Curie was one of the leading feminist figures of the scientific world, facing obstacles in her professional and personal life, both exacerbated by gender discrimination. This is the story of how she proved the existence of the element Radium, thereby paving the way for many discoveries in nuclear science and earning her a second Nobel Prize.
Producer: Anil Baral
Screenwriter: Kathryn Maughan
Kitty Hawk - The story of the Wright Brothers, the original aviation pioneers, that chronicles their journey and struggles towards the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Director/Screenwriter: Tim Kirkman
Producers: Joshua Astrachan, Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Gill Holland
Submissions for the 2009 TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund open November 12, 2008 and will be accepted through January 9, 2009 (postmark deadline). Fund recipients will be announced in the spring of 2009. Visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org for further rules and information on submissions.
About Tribeca Film Institute
The Tribeca Film Institute is dedicated to creative innovation in film and media arts. The Institute creates original programs that draw on the unifying power of film to promote creativity, understanding, tolerance and global awareness. Our commitment is to educate, entertain and inspire filmmakers and audiences alike, while strengthening the artistic and economic fabric of New York City and its Lower Manhattan community.
Drew Carey takes us on a guided tour of Second Life (SL), a virtual world with more than 500,000 residents. This short documentary was produced by Paul Feine and edited by The Digital Filmmaker's Roger M. Richards.
SL isn’t your typical virtual world. Unlike other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are no defined roles or objectives in SL. Just like in real life, SL residents determine their own goals and decide for themselves how best to achieve them. Moreover, virtually everything in SL was created by the residents themselves using tools provided by Linden Lab, the company that launched SL in 2003.
SL is based on a simple set of institutional arrangements that would make F.A. Hayek proud. In essence, the people who own the property in SL make the rules. The result is a spontaneously ordered world in which residents are free to fly, teleport, build, trade and interact with others without interference from the state.
Recently, Linden Lab—the SL equivalent of a state—has begun acting more and more like a real life government by restricting activities such as gambling. But open source competitors based on the SL platform are currently in development. so better virtual worlds offering even more freedom are just around the corner.
The headline reads: “The Dark Knight swing past $500,000,000 in tickets worldwide.” I grew up when Batman was a mere comic book character and, at that, a flawed superhero who sometimes ran with a sidekick, a kid named Robin. None of us wanted to be Robin and if you asked then and also asked now, I could not tell you why. With my friends, I wanted to be Batman because he seemed closest to being real. Or better, Plastic Man, but that is another story. Batman wore a protective suit. He drove a powerful car. Sure, he could fly, but sometimes not very well. He had his bat cave, unrequited love, a fanciful disguise and won his battles by cleverness, strength of purpose, and drive, meaning he outsmarted and outlasted the bad guys. Incidentally, those bad guys were unique, not quite loveable, and easy to hate. It was easy to tell the black hats from the white hats, good from evil. Now along comes director Christopher Nolan and in his two Batman films, he changes the ground rules and effectively removes our empathy for Batman. I am not sure it is for the best, or, more pointedly, the best for my original take on that heroic crime fighter from my youth. In fairness, before Nolan’s two films, the franchise faced death. That is no longer the case. Despite all the changes, and box office success, this latest entry in the Batman cannon “The Dark Knight” is in some ways a massive failure. The film is loud. It is dark. It makes little or no sense. Yes, it is a fantasy and as such it does not have to make sense to be entertaining. The driving music helps keep the viewer tense beyond reason. Too much happens too quickly. The Joker with his crew plant bombs with impunity. Explosions blow up everything at will. All the characters, good, bad and indifferent, migrate from point to point as if they were transplants from a Star Trek transporter. Yes, I know and understand the movie is a fantasy and anything can happen when you suspend disbelief. Most of the actors are dull, lifeless, and unconvincing, including and mainly Christian Bale as Batman. Next time Mr. Bale, I would appreciate a bit more emotion, please. Of course, that remarkable performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, mad as all get out, and very weirdly funny is the only character in the movie with a personality, except for Aaron Eckhart, who has a delicious insane turn in a movie where most everything is predictable and for all that noise and action, actually dull. While watching the film I sometimes wondered what other movies some of the other the actors had wandered in from. Many of scenes felt as if they were strung together only because they seemed like a good fit and in the context of a messy film, it did not matter that a piece of action made little or no sense as long as the action never flagged. And, by the way, it never does. Christopher Nolan’s pseudo intellectualism is the sort that 15-year-old boys wallow in after they learn that all in the world is not what it seems. Video games only add to the confused philosophy of life that inhabits our young. This is true especially when a person can find anything on the Internet to energize a mind that more likely than not overflows with too much potted junk anyway. Nolan, it seems, wants us to believe that the way of the world is a world gone mad, a world in constant chaos, a world mired in hopelessness where evil is good and good is evil. Because of this confusion, morality is non-existent. There is no civility in Gotham City. The people who live there think Batman is out of control, a villain and vigilante. Nolan revels in the hopeless that for some accompanies life in the big city. We have to ask ourselves if Christopher Nolan’s cynicism should be our way of life in a world we cannot control. Think of the end of the movie with the Joker hanging off the side of a building, facing Batman who finally has his enemy at his mercy. Batman has the opportunity to kill this madman who has been trampling Gotham City with impunity. The Joker taunts Batman and effectively says you can’t kill me because you don’t have the courage to see me die. The Joker may be right. Batman leaves the Joker hanging and runs off to do what he considers his duty elsewhere. Despite this moral dilemma, by allowing the Joker to live, a sequel is sure to come. The box office beckons. And who says Hollywood doesn’t know what it is doing. When I saw the movie, the audience was attentive and very quiet, except for the occasional intake of breath during an exciting sequence, or a barely suppressed giggle whenever the Joker appeared. I can only guess that the audience assumed it was watching art instead of succumbing to clever commerce. Just because what we call entertainment, in this case a Hollywood film, makes a lot of money and has a huge and growing audience does mean that it is great. The Dark Knight has all the flaws I mentioned and more. Perhaps Christopher Nolan knows whereof he speaks and his mixed message is the right one in an uncertain world. In a age where terror lies around every corner and in which military might does not often succeed in fighting fanaticism, with extra effort I can understand why the audience is rushing to see a movie where good and bad are not opposites but the same side of a single coin. More and more it seems to be the way of the world. It doesn’t make Christopher Nolan and his writer’s right, but it may make their muddled mess so. Some may think I do not get it. They may be right, though I think you are not. Really there is not that much to get, and except for a cynical take on life, there is little to hold the movie together. It is a tribute to 21st Century blockbuster movie making, but that is all it is and nothing more. ©Ron Steinman
At 11p.m on December 26, 2001 police in Prentiss, Mississippi raided the residence of Cory Maye, a 21-year-old father who was at home with his 18-month-old daughter Ta'Corriana. The cops were looking for drugs and smashed through the back door. In the ensuing chaos, Maye hunkered down with his daughter in a bedroom and when the police broke down that door, he fired three bullets, one of which killed Officer Ron Jones. Maye testified in court that the police did not identify themselves until after they had entered his residence; indeed, he testified that they did not identify themselves until after he had fired his shots. Once they did, he said he put his weapon on the floor, slid it toward police, and surrendered. "Mississippi Drug War Blues" is a story about the intersection of race (Maye is black and Jones was white); the war on drugs; the disturbing increase in the militarization of police tactics; and systemic flaws in the criminal justice and expert-testimony systems. It is a tragedy in which one man is dead and another may spend his life in prison.
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