It’s hard to overstate the importance of the
merger between the Tribeca Film Institute and Renew Media announced in early March. For years,
Renew Media, previously known as National Video Resources and established by the Rockefeller Foundation, had built a reputation as the nation’s premier resource for providing grants to both emerging and established film and new media artists. Now, with this historic merger, Renew’s staff and slate of programs will join
Tribeca’s substantial organization, while also benefiting from the latter’s more visible and established public presence.
Tribeca’s visibility comes thanks to its association with Robert De Niro, who co-founded the organization with Jane Rosenthal and will continue to Co-Chair Tribeca’s Board of Directors. But much of the work of spearheading this marriage will fall on the shoulders of Brian Newman, Executive Director of Renew, who now becomes CEO of the Tribeca Institute. Luckily, helping filmmakers in tangible ways has been a lifelong passion for Newman -- and his new position gives him a wealth of opportunities to continue in that endeavor.
According to Newman, the most immediate – and, for filmmakers, the most important – change will come in the realm of grants. “We do a lot of great things,” Newman says, “but when you can actually put money in an artist’s hand and say, ‘Come make your film,’ that’s the most exciting part. And right away, we have multiple more resources to give to filmmakers.” Both Renew and Tribeca offered financial support to filmmakers as part of their original goals: Indeed, Renew’s central project has always been the Media Arts Fellowships, funded largely by the Rockefeller Foundation, which have given substantial sums of money to filmmakers and artists such as Miranda July, Craig Brewer, Carlos Reygadas, Jim McKay, and Kenneth Anger. (Renew gives out 20 Media Arts Fellowships in the US of $35,000 each, and six in Mexico of $20,000 each.)
Tribeca has a partnership with Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which supports film projects with a science-oriented bent. In addition, the recently announced Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund offers finishing funds to feature-length documentaries that “promote social change and highlight issues currently absent from mainstream media.”
Although all of these programs give money (among other things) to filmmakers, they will have to be organized carefully under the umbrella of the new Tribeca Institute. “We have to preserve their differences, because each of these programs is unique,” Newman says. For example, the Media Arts fellowships are the result of an extended nominating process. The Gucci fund, on the other hand, has an open call for entries and “will probably have thousands of applications.” To that end, discussions about how these programs will be structured within the new organization are still ongoing. For his part, Newman sees “a division of artists’ service programs that has both multiple funding streams, as well as multiple service streams, such as labs and workshops and education.”
And if he has his way, there may be even more: “Now we can start thinking about where the synergies lie within in those programs. We’d like to raise more money to expand the Media Arts Fellowships program. Do we do even more? Do we raise more money through different fundraisers, and build even more opportunities? The whole reason we’re doing this is to do more for artists, and to help filmmakers make their films.”
What do those filmmakers do after making those films? Newman has some ideas about that as well. Helping filmmakers chart a course through the uncertain world of distribution through new technologies has always been one of Renew’s key issues, and that will continue under the new Tribeca partnership. Their educational program “Looking At” curates, promotes, and distributes collections of documentary films around specific topics, taking them out to “anywhere between 50 and 350 cities across the United States with grants support, working with local venues and scholars.” Newman hopes to see that program expanded to include fiction films as well.
As for how he sees the future of film distribution playing out, Newman--who has been organizing and participating in panels about that very topic for some time now--has a number of thoughts, and some key advice for filmmakers: “Things are definitely moving towards giving the consumer what they want, when they want it, on whatever device they want it. Whether you’re distributing your film yourself or going with a distributor, you want to be putting it on as many platforms as possible.”
Because of the prevalence of technology everywhere else, he says, the old rules may not apply to many artists anymore: “People who are going to read about your film in the New York Times or the local Arkansas newspaper don’t want to wait until it comes out on DVD months later. When it plays a film festival in Atlanta, they want to buy it there on the spot -- or go to a website and do it. They don’t want to wait. And you’ve got to take advantage of that.”
--Bilge Ebiri