Tribeca film fest opens development program to Canadian moviemakers

CBC News
Two teams of Canadian filmmakers will be presenting their projects to a group of movie industry executives as part of New York's Tribeca Film Festival.

It's the first time Tribeca, the influential festival begun as a response to the 9/11 attacks, has hosted international filmmakers at its Tribeca All Access Program.

The Canadian films selected are:

Sight Unseen, a coming of age family story rooted in aboriginal culture and stories, written by Shannon Masters and directed by Jennifer Podemski.
Red Velvet Girls, about a teenage lesbian vampire who must choose between her childhood love and an arranged marriage, produced by Larisa Andrews and directed by Claudia Molina.
The participants attend a series of workshops and present their projects in one-on-one meetings with more than 100 potential investors, development executives, producers and agents.

The Canadian Film Centre in Toronto is collaborating with the Tribeca Film Institute to bring the two Canadian filmmaking teams to New York.

The All Access Program is designed to foster relationships between movie industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities.

A total of 37 filmmakers from Britain, Australia, the U.S. and Canada have been invited.

The Canadian participants will be out of competition and not eligible for the three juried awards being presented for screenwriting at Tribeca.

Tribeca's short film competition features several Canadian movies, including Song of Slomon, which was produced through the 2007 CFC Short Dramatic Film Program.

Directed by Emmanuel Shirinian, it stars Michael Cohen as a conservative Orthodox rabbi whose soul is invaded by a catchy, ubiquitous pop tune that threatens to send him scrambling to the dance floor on the Sabbath.

Other Canadian works screening in the festival include:

Eau Boy, directed and written by Eric Gravel.
About Face, directed by Chad Maker.
Being Human, directed and written by Mike Palermo.
Baghdad Twist, directed by Joe Balass.
Yellow Sticky Notes, directed and written by Jeff Chiba Stearns.
Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin's experimental film My Winnipeg and Isabella Rossellini's series of shorts about insect life, Green Porno, will also be at this year's Tribeca.

This is the fifth year for the All Access Program, which has so far supported 117 film projects, of which 14 have been completed.

Some of those have returned to premiere at the festival, including this year's Fire Under the Snow, a documentary about a Tibetan monk, and Marina of the Zabbaleen, about an Egyptian family who try to survive by sorting garbage.

The festival opens April 23 with a screening of the Tina Fey comedy Baby Mama.