Tribeca All Access Gives Filmmakers Big Boost at Buddakan

The Tribeca Film Festival isn't just about movies that are already in the can. Now in its fifth year, the Tribeca All Access program provides filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities the chance to meet with investors, development executives, producers, and agents. TAA alumni include Makoto Sasa (Fire Under the Snow), Engi Wassef (Marina of the Zabbaleen) and Kristy Guevara-Flanagan (Going on 13). In the past week, 37 filmmakers—chosen from more than 550 applicants—had 653 meetings, and the 2008 TAA Creative Promise Awards at Buddakan, the 15,000-square-foot Christian Liagre-designed East-meets-West culinary temple on the edge of the Meatpacking District, capped it all off Friday night.

Juror Sheila Johnson said that since all the submissions were excellent, determining the winners fell to both artistic and practical considerations. "It was the power of the story," she said. "Then you have to think beyond that. Is it a story that can make it theatrically? You have to take that into consideration."
The narrative prize went to Pete Chatmon for $Free.99, a heist picture, with honorable mention to Rodney Evans for Day Dream, a film about jazz pioneers Buddy Bolden and Billy Strayhorn. $Free.99 will be Chatmon's third feature; his first, Premium, is currently running on Showtime. "It was an honor to be around these filmmakers and have the opportunity to meet the caliber of companies we did through TAA," he said.
 
Gemma Cubero won the documentary prize for She Wants To Be a Matador, a film about the only active professional female matador in the world and a woman who has run away from home to be one. Honorable mention went to Lisa Collins for Oscar's Comeback, a documentary about a film festival in South Dakota for early African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Cubero shared her prize with co-director, co-producer, and cinematographer Celeste Carrasco, with whom she has been working on the film for seven years. "I feel like I got a great gift," said Cubero, "a team of people who believe in you. They set you up with really great professionals."

The screenwriting award went to Anslem Richardson for Bardos, a thriller about the aftermath of a car accident, with honorable mention to Heavy Metal Indians, a drama by Nathan Young and Kade Twist. The emerging narrative prize went to Leigh Dana Jackson for The Infinite Life of Stuart Hornsley, about a man who builds a time machine, with honorable mention to Shawn Ku for White Rice, about a teenager who moves to a small town in Oregon after the death of his mother.

Alka Raghuram won the L'Oréal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award for The Conqueror, a drama about a boy coping with the loss of his parents in the mountains of North India. The $15,000 prize is the first money she's gotten for the project. "I've met some wonderful people who have given me some great strategies for raising money," she said. "Just being invited to the program is such a validation. It's a huge leap in how I see myself as a filmmaker."

WNBC 4 will feature the Tribeca All Access program tomorrow during the 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. news hour and again during the 6:00 p.m. newscast.