Monday, April 30------The Tribeca Film Institute announced the winners of the fourth Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards.  Tribeca All Access (TAA) is a program designed to help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities. At ceremonies held over the weekend at the Tribeca Film Center, the following winners were honored:

• NARRATIVE SECTION PRIZE: Ben Rekhi for his current screenplay WASTE, which tells the story of a widowed NYC sanitation worker who must negotiate his relationship with his son after he becomes a key figure in a labor dispute (Co-written by John Campo).
• DOCUMENTARY SECTION PRIZE: Dee Rees for her documentary work-in-progress, EVENTUAL SALVATION, which follows an 80-year-old grandmother who returns to Liberia to rebuild her life and community after years of civil war.
• SCREENWRITING SECTION PRIZE: Marilyn Fu for her screenplay, SISTERHOOD OF THE NIGHT,  an adaptation of the short story by Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser. Caryn Waechter is attached to direct.

The winners were selected on the strength of their vision and filmmaking promise. The TAA Creative Promise Award comes with a prize of $10,000 for narrative and documentary and $5,000 for screenwriting. Creative Promise Award winners also received original artwork from Alex Beard, Kehinde Wiley and Jessica Ann Peavey. All of the filmmakers participating in the program have scripts or documentary proposals for which they are seeking funding and/or representation. 

2007 Tribeca All Access participants were selected from an open call for submissions, which garnered over 300 entries from across the country.  A jury of distinguished entertainment and arts personalities selected the three winners and two honorable mentions.  Jurors for this year’s  included actors Kerry Washington and Freddy Rodriguez (GRINDHOUSE), Andre Leon Talley (Editor At Large, Vogue), producer Elizabeth Avellan, Susie Castillo (host of MTV’s “TRL,”), fashion designer Rachel Roy, DJ Spooky, Heavy D (hip hop artist/actor) and entertainment exec Tracey Edmonds.  . 

Tribeca All Access provided the participating directors and screenwriters the opportunity to meet one-on-one with more than 100 potential investors, development executives, producers, and agents in prescheduled meetings.  During this year’s five-day event, Tribeca All Access arranged more than 400 meetings for program participants.

Sandy Mandelberger, Awards Watch Editor