The Press Release:
The ninth day of the Tribeca Festival, presented by AT&T, featured the jury competition and art award winners, along with standout world premieres, shorts, and documentaries, and the debut of the Queen Collective program.
LFG had its red carpet premiere where director/producer Andrea Nix Fine, director/producer Sean Fine, executive producer Ben Silverman, executive producer Howard Owens, film subject and World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe, producer Abby Greensfelder, CNN Anchor Abby Philips and Marcus Richardson attended the photocall. The groundbreaking documentary follows the story of The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team three months before the 2019 World Cup where they filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation.
Hosted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Father of the Cyborgs premiered tonight at Brookfield Place, with director David Burke; film subject and neurologist Dr. Phil Kennedy; director of the Georgia Tech BrainLab, Dr. Melody Moore Jackson; and neurobiologist Dr. Darcy B. Kelley in attendance. The film is a fascinating portrait of Kennedy, a brilliant yet divisive figure in the neuro-sugery field, and is a nuanced exploration of neuro-security, ethics and self-experimentation. After the screening, Jen Schwartz of Scientific American led a panel with Kennedy, Jackson, and Kelley that discussed Kennedy’s extraordinary work and legacy within his field of computer-brain interface and beyond.
Brookfield Place also hosted the world premiere of False / Positive, a genre-bending thriller about the perils of parenthood. The cast, including writer/producer Ilana Glazer, Sophia Bush, Zainab Jah, Josh Hamilton, and Sabina Gadecki, walked the red carpet along with director/producer/writer John Lee, producer Jonathan Wang, and editor John Philpot. The film team excitedly greeted Glazer, who’s expecting her first child with husband David Rooklin, upon her arrival at the carpet. She took photos with longtime collaborator Lee as he cradled her baby bump, leading some photographers to mistake him for the baby’s father, until Rooklin jumped in and the soon-to-be mom and dad embraced and posed as the crowd ate it up. “Your baby’s already famous!” Bush exclaimed. “About two weeks left [to go],” Glazer added. During the film’s introduction, Glazer thanked the crew, and, addressing the audience, said that “we hope [the film] moves you.”
At the rooftop of Spring Studios, winners of U.S. Narrative, International Narrative, Documentary; Short Films, Immersive, the Nora Ephron Award, and the first-ever Podcast and Games categories were announced. The awards ceremony honored the most diverse line-up of creators in Tribeca’s 20 year history and awarded $165,000 in cash prizes. The top honors in feature films went to The Novice, Brighton 4th, and Ascension. Chanel James and Taylor Garron won the Nora Ephron Award and a $25,000 prize for As of Yet. The award, created nine years ago, honors excellence in storytelling by a female writer or director embodying the spirit and boldness of the late filmmaker. Tribeca honored innovation in storytelling with its Storyscapes Award for the Immersive section, which went to Felix Gaedtke and Gayatri Parameswaran for Kusunda. The inaugural Tribeca Podcast honors for the Non-Fiction Narrative Award went to Guardians of the River, and the Fiction Narrative Award went to Vermont Ave. In the Games category, the first-ever Tribeca Games Award was given to Norco, created by Geography of Robots and published by Raw Fury.
At Staten Island, twin Sisters Jorja Harmon and Jolene Smith showed up for the photocall of Girls Can’t Surf.
Happily star Kerry Bishe and producer Ross Kohn with his wife, Cobra Kai Courtney Henggeler showed up for photocalls in Staten Island, supported in the audience by Glow actor Chris Lowell. In a special introduction to the film, Kerry Bishe read a letter from the writer and director to the Tribeca Film Festival audience that said everyone was traveling back to the Tribeca 2020 festival that didn’t happen due to the pandemic. The letter thanked everyone for watching a film that “fit into no particular genre.”
Filmmaker Kate Tsang, producer Carolyn Mao, actress Miya Cech, actor Leonardo Nam, actor Kannon Omachi, costume designer Amanda Bujak, script consultant Levi Abrino all attended the photocall of Marvelous and the Black Hole.
It was Award-Winning Director Jamila Wignot’s first time seeing her documentary Ailey with an in-person audience at the New York premiere at Hudson Yards. Robert Battle, Judith Jamison and Bennett Rink of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater attended to support the documentary of the iconic dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey. Also in attendance was Lauren DeFilippo, Amanda Pollak, Stephen Ives and Annukka Lilia.
Haimy Assefa (Black Birth), Arielle Knight (Song for Grace), Cai Thomas (Change the Name), Tina Charles (Game Changer) all attended the photocall for the debut of the Queen Collective program. The Queen Collective program aims to accelerate gender and racial equality behind the camera by supporting Black women directors. Four documentaries, produced through the Queen Collective, explore an array of topics from Black motherhood to youth activism. Produced by Tribeca Studios, Procter & Gamble, Flavor Unit. Jane Rosenthal and Paula Weinstein made an appearance. Tina Charles reflected on the program and shared her appreciation, “To see an industry where there needs to be more of us behind the camera, I’m very thankful to have Tribeca and P&G behind us.”
Four shorts that tell stories about rebellion and reflection debuted as part of the Acting Out program at Hudson Yards. Excited cast and filmmakers stepped onto the carpet to celebrate their big nights, including Director Lamar Bailey and her mother Gloria Karamañites of Miss Panama and Director Suzannah Mirghani and cinematographer Rodney Sharkey of Virtual Voice. For Radical Love, Director William Kirkley and stars Bernardine Dorhn and Bill Ayers were in attendance alongside proud filmmakers Ryan White premiered Coded, which tells the story of illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, with Jari Jones, Christoper Leggett, Jessica Hargrave, Marc Pritchard, Brent Miller, Justin Wilkes and Sara Bernstein in tow.
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Piercing Ken Thoughts: There is so much to digest in these daily recaps so I’m sticking with keeping the editorial soapboxing to a minimum. As you can see there was some interesting stuff happening yesterday and we still have a few days left to go. The event runs for a couple of more days this month and has a little bit of something for everyone. I’m going to keep sharing these recaps so the cinephile members in the readership can make some notes on things they wish to investigate further once the event has ended. Not everyone is attending this happening after all. See you next time around with more of this and anything else that comes to mind in the interim. I’m currently out of town on a short vacation but the editorial offices are still open 🙂 Publishing continues just the same on this site and on PiercingMetal.com so stay tuned. Please keep safe out there.
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