Tribeca Teaches programme expanded to Los Angeles

Tribeca Film Institute has announced its expansion of Tribeca Teaches programme to Los Angeles, which will mark the first time Tribeca has ventured outside of its home base in New York City. The programme is presented in partnership with a California non-profit organization, Southern California Crossroads.

“Los Angeles seemed like a natural place to land,” executive director of TFI Beth Janson said. “We are really excited about this partnership.”

The collaboration began when Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal and reformed ex-gang member Paul Carillo met during the planning of the Google Ideas/Council on Foreign Relations/Tribeca conference on de-radicalization. Carillo is the co-founder of Southern California Crossroads. He credits Rosenthal for the partnership and support for the program.

“Paul had an interesting look at the role of popular media in inspiring young people to join gangs,” director of education for TFI Vee Bravo said. “Both he and I recognized that young people are learning the narrative of life more so through video games than films.”

The cirriculum will focus on the medium of video games and will partner experienced filmmakers with teachers to help students script their own stories using the familiar narrative of video games. The 18 week programme will take place at Lennox Middle School, a location with a population that is 93% low-income Latino Immigrants.

“In these kids neighborhoods, there is no Harvard graduate, Yale Graduate, doctors or lawyers. In their neighborhood there are drug dealers and gang leaders,” Carillo says of Lennox Middle School. “If they are consuming their fair share of media content that is based on that sort of activity, it indirectly supports what they see everyday and validates it unfortunately.”

Back at its home base in New York, TFI announced a new season of the Tribeca Youth Screening Series that began in January. A new partnership with the Independent Television Service and the Women and Girls Lead Campaign offer free screenings of a series that examines and celebrates African American women’s leadership, empowerment and social justice.

“We work closely with the industry and ITVS. It came up that they were doing a women and girls lead initiative and we thought it was a perfect partner, content wise, for what we were doing the youth screening series,” Janson said. “We have recently started to develop more relationship with the young women leadership school network. We are excited about this partnership.”

The programme will run until March and continues this month with the screenings of The Interrupters and The Black Power Mixtapes 1967-1975.

“We had so much interest in the film that we are having our first ever parents screening in the evening,” Bravo said of The Black Power Mixtapes 1967-1975. “We will do a morning session for the students and in the evening we are inviting the community and their parents to watch the films with their children in March.”