March 23rd, 2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Five additional virtual reality experiences announced as part of the Tribeca Festival Hub’s Virtual Arcade presented by AT&T, along with the speakers for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Imagination Day powered by The Hatchery

NEW YORK, NY– March 23, 2016 –The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) presented by AT&T, today announced additions to an extensive line-up of experiential programming that will be featured during the 2016 Festival, including the world premiere of the bomb, a groundbreaking, multimedia installation created by Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser that immerses the audience in the strange, compelling, and unsettling reality of today’s nuclear threat. the bomb will be the closing event of the interactive and experiential portion of the Festival, on Saturday, April 23, and Sunday, April 24, at Gotham Hall with two shows each evening. It will be preceded by a panel with the creators of the bomb, along with Michael Douglas, the Oscar-winning actor, producer, & advocate of nuclear non-proliferation.

The Festival also announced five additional VR projects in the Virtual Arcade presented by AT&T, housed in Tribeca Experiential, presented by AT&T, and a roster of tech thought leaders who will participate in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Imagination Day powered by The Hatchery on April 19. The 15th edition of TFF, presented by AT&T for the third year, will take place from April 13 - 24 in New York City.

Combining film, music, and animation to create an intense, visceral experience at the intersection of art, politics, and technology, the bomb places the audience in the midst of a performance space, completely surrounded by imagery projected on thirty-foot-screens, with the band, The Acid, playing in the center. An exploration of the culture of nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire, the perverse appeal they still exert, and the impossibility of ever fully controlling them, the bomb was created by Smriti Keshari, an award-winning filmmaker and artist, and Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control. Keshari and Schlosser collaborated with a visionary team of artists and designers. They include Kevin Ford, an indie director who edited and helped to create the film component of the bomb; United Visual Artists, an innovative art and design practice that conceived its unique performance space; and Stanley Donwood, the artist responsible for Radiohead’s graphic design, who supervised the project’s animation and its overall look. The Acid, known for its debut album ‘Liminal,' have composed an original score for the film and will perform live at Gotham Hall. After its TFF premiere, the bomb will travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin and other locations.

"the bomb is a powerful example of the combined impact technology and storytelling can have on an audience," said Genna Terranova, Festival Director. "The experience is simultaneously an archival story, musical performance, and haunting visual and auditory simulation that blends artistry with political and social issues. We are proud to host such a unique world premiere and share this remarkable experience with New York audiences ahead of its world tour.”

In addition five new virtual reality projects were announced as part of the brand new Virtual Arcade presented by AT&T at the Tribeca Festival Hub. World premiering are “Grateful Dead: Truckin,” from Jaunt VR, that captures the the historic 'Fare Thee Well’ tour and “Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart,” created by The New York Times, a stereoscopic experience that brings viewers to Pluto. “The Click Effect,” created by Sandy Smolan and James Nestor, allows you to free-dive below the ocean’s surface to discover the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales. “Perspective 2: The Misdemeanor,” created by Rose Troche and Morris May, is a 360-degree, live action drama that details a misdemeanor stop by a police officer in Brooklyn that spirals out of control. “Collisions” examines the clash of Aboriginal and Western culture. Open to the public April 18-20 with a Festival Hub Pass, the 18 projects in the Virtual Arcade presented by AT&T invite audiences to explore vastly different worlds crafted by some of the leading creators working in the medium.

TFF also announced additional speakers for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Imagination Day powered by The Hatchery, an all-day summit on April 19 that asks: what happens when our wildest dreams become reality and what will that reality be in our not-so-distant future? Newly announced speakers include Meredith Perry, inventor of uBeam who will speak about a world without wires; Bryan Johnson, founder of OS Fund, who will speak about reorienting humanity’s identity and aspirations; James Canton, Ph.D., a leading global futurist, social scientist, entrepreneur, author, and sought-after business adviser, who will speak about the future of medicine; and Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, IBM, who will speak about artificial intelligence in film and the real world. It was also announced that VR directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël of Felix & Paul Studios will offer an immersive experience by giving their talk entirely in VR with the audience all wearing virtual reality headsets. They join a previously announced line up of some of the most influential, provocative and creative minds, including entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who will speak about daring to dream; business leader and product innovator Regina Dugan of Google, who will speak about making the future not predicting the future; ATAP, Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, who will offer an examination of the possible disruption and unpredictability surrounding the growth of VR technology; and STRIVR founder and CEO Derek Belch, who will speak about virtual reality in sports.

Details follow:

the bomb (World Premiere)
the bomb is a groundbreaking multimedia installation that immerses the audience in the strange, compelling, and unsettling reality of today’s nuclear threat.

The co-creators of the bomb are Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser. Keshari is an award-winning filmmaker and artist who produced Food Chains, a documentary about migrant farm workers featuring Schlosser and Eva Longoria. Schlosser is the author of the best-selling books Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, and Command and Control, a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History. He also helped to produce Food, Inc., the Oscar-nominated documentary, Fast Food Nation, a feature film directed by Richard Linklater, and There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

United Visual Artists (UVA), a visionary London based art and design practice, is creating the bomb’s performance space. UVA has an open approach to collaboration, which has led to a diverse range of projects including work with choreographer Benjamin Millepied and the Paris Opéra Ballet, and musicians Massive Attack, Battles and James Blake and The Creators Project. UVA’s work has been widely exhibited in international institutions, galleries and one-off events including at the Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Serpentine Gallery.

Stanley Donwood, one of the most celebrated graphic artists in Great Britain, is the bomb’s artistic director. Donwood is well-known for his haunting and evocative artwork for Radiohead, with whom he has collaborated since 1994. Alongside Donwood, the animator Kingdom of Ludd is creating original illustrations and animation for the film.

The Acid has composed an original score for the bomb and will be performing it live. The Acid came together from three separate worlds. They are Grammy nominated DJ & producer Adam Freeland; Californian Polymath Steve Nalepa, whose time is split as a producer, composer and professor of music technology; and Australian, LA based, artist and producer RY X.

The film component of the bomb was made by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser. Ford is an independent filmmaker whose documentary Stone Barn Castle premiered at SXSW 2015 and whose most recent indie film, Drowned, stars Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood), with Adrien Brody serving as executive producer.

the bomb is supported by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, N Square, Ploughshares Fund, Compton Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation, the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Made in NY Media Center by IFP, and individual donors.

DATE: Saturday, April 23 and Sunday, April 24
TIME: 7:00pm and 10:00pm
LOCATION: Gotham Hall

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Bomb Panel
Join the experts and project creators as they discuss why the less we talk about nuclear weapons, the more dangerous they become: Michael Douglas, actor, producer, and advocate of nuclear non-proliferation; Eric Schlosser, author Command & Control, Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness; Emma Belcher, MacArthur Foundation; Joe Cirincione, Ploughshares Fund; Robert Kenner, filmmaker Command & Control; Smriti Keshari, filmmaker the bomb.
DATE: Saturday, April 23
TIME: 5:00pm
LOCATION: SVA2

Additional selections for Virtual Arcade, presented by AT&T

Grateful Dead: Truckin’ (World Premiere)
Project Creator: Jaunt VR
Key Collaborators: Ryan Wiederkehr, Patrick Meegan, Joey Santana, Dennis “Wiz” Leonard, Cliff Plumer
A sneak peek VR experience of the Grateful Dead's historic 'Fare Thee Well" final tour. Mixed in Dolby Atmos, the audience is given unprecedented access to the bands performance of the hit song "Truckin", from a vantage that is otherwise impossible to experience.

Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart (World Premiere)
Project Creators: The New York Times
Key Collaborators: Lunar Planetary Institute, Universities Space Research Association
Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart is a stereoscopic VR experience that brings viewers to Pluto. Watch the New Horizons spacecraft zoom through space, soar over rugged mountains and bright plains, and stand on Pluto’s unique surface as its largest moon hovers over the horizon.

The Click Effect
Project Creators: Sandy Smolan, James Nestor
Key Collaborators: Annapurna Pictures, Vrse, Vrse.works, The New York Times Op-Docs, The Sundance Institute
Free-dive one hundred feet below the ocean’s surface to discover the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales. The Click Effect is a live-action VR experience from Annapurna Pictures, Vrse.works, Sandy Smolan, and James Nestor; the first in a series of immersive journalism experiments commissioned by New Frontier at Sundance Institute, published by The New York Times Op-Docs.

Collisions
Project Creator: Lynette Wallworth
Key Collaborators: Nyarri Morgan (featured); Nicole Newnham (producer); Curtis Taylor (narrator); Karryn de Cinque (editor); Patrick Meegan (director of photography); Jaunt VR
From acclaimed Australian artist/filmmaker Lynette Wallworth, Collisions is a virtual reality journey to the homeland of indigenous elder Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the Western Australian desert. It explores the dramatic collision between Nyarri's traditional world view and the cutting edge of Western science and technology, when he witnessed firsthand and with no context, an atomic test.

PERSPECTIVE 2: THE MISDEMEANOR
Project Creators: Rose Troche, Morris May
Key Collaborators: Amy Lo, Charles Ottoway
When two young men are stopped by a police officer in Brooklyn, a simple misdemeanor spirals out of control. A gripping drama shot live-action in 360-degrees and weaving between four distinct points-of-view, The Misdemeanor highlights the subjectivity of memory and personal experience with an ambitious approach to narrative storytelling in virtual reality.

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Imagination Day powered by The Hatchery
On Tuesday, April 19, the Tribeca Film Festival presented by AT&T will host some of the most influential, provocative and creative minds for an all-day summit that asks: what happens when our wildest dreams become reality and what will that reality be in our not-so-distant future? We are at an inflection point in history. Experience the wonder and inspiration of new technologies, as tech’s thought leaders reveal what is just beyond the horizon through multisensory storytelling. Bloomberg has been a supporter of the Tribeca Film Festival presented by AT&T since the Festival’s inception.

Confirmed speakers additions include:

• Meredith Perry, inventor of uBeam, the technology that transmits power over the air to charge electronic devices wirelessly. uBeam was conceived the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, where she won the Penn invention competition that recognizes ground-breaking technological innovations. Just four weeks later, Meredith was invited to demo uBeam’s technology on stage at the esteemed Wall Street Journal “All Things Digital”. Meredith served as a student ambassador for NASA, where she worked on technology to detect life on Mars, experimented in zero gravity and researched and published papers in astrobiology and medicine. Meredith has been included in Fortune’s “40 Under 40” Mobilizers, Forbes’ “30 Under 30” and Vanity Fair’s “The Next Establishment.” She has also been recognized as one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People” and is the recipient of Elle Magazine’s Genius Award.

• Bryan Johnson, founder of Braintree, which PayPal acquired in 2013 for $800 million. One year later, he started OS Fund with $100 million of his personal capital to invest in scientists and inventors working on some of the world's most audacious endeavors. He is focused on the future of intelligence, genomics, synthetic biology, the space economy, and how ideologies invisibly shape our behavior. He works hard at being a father of three, loves flying airplanes and climbing mountains, and wrote a children's book. His defining belief is that we're at a uniquely exciting moment in the arc of humanity because we can now literally create any kind of world we can imagine.

• James Canton, Ph.D., a leading global futurist, social scientist, entrepreneur, author, and sought-after business adviser. For the past 25 years, he has been forecasting the impact of future trends and innovations on business, markets and society. He is Chairman and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, a world renown San Francisco-based think tank he founded in 1990, to help clients better anticipate the future. He directs the Global Risk Analytics and Strategy practice. He advises corporations and governments worldwide on trends and global strategy in innovation, IT, health care, work, climate, energy, security, and demographics.

• Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, IBM. Jon Iwata leads IBM’s marketing, communications and citizenship organization. His team is responsible for the marketing of IBM’s product and services and stewardship of the IBM brand, recognized as one of the most valuable in the world. He is the architect of IBM’s strategic brand platforms, including e-business, Smarter Planet, and Watson. In 2015, Jon was inducted into the CMO Club Hall of Fame and received the Distinguished Service Award from The Seminar, an organization of Chief Communications Officers. He is co-inventor of a U.S. patent for advanced semiconductor lithography technology.

Passes and tickets for the 2016 Festival
Passes, including the Hudson and Festival Hub Passes, are on sale now at tribecafilm.com/festival/tickets. The Festival Hub Pass provides access for one to all public events at the Festival Hub at Spring Studios throughout the Festival, including interactive and virtual reality installations: the Virtual Arcade, presented by AT&T, Storyscapes, presented by AT&T, and DEFCON exhibits, Interactive Day and Imagination Day, select Tribeca Talks events, special screenings, live music and performances, as well as Pass Holder Lounges with food and drinks. It also provides access to the Disruptive Innovation Awards, two screening vouchers redeemable for evening/weekend or matinee-priced tickets, discounted rates on festival screening tickets, and an invitation to a Tribeca Film Festival Filmmaker Party. The Festival Hub Pass costs $550.

The Hudson Pass provides access for one to all public events at the Festival Hub, as well as Pass Holder Lounges with food, and drinks. It also provides access to all evening/weekend and matinee screenings, all Tribeca Talks, the Disruptive Innovation Awards, and a Tribeca Film Festival Filmmaker Party. The Hudson Pass costs $1,250.

Advance selection ticket packages are now on sale. All advance selection packages can be purchased online at tribecafilm.com/festival/tickets, or by telephone at (646) 502-5296 or toll free at (866) 941-FEST (3378).

Single tickets cost $20.00 for evening and weekend screenings, $10.00 for weekday matinee screenings, and $40.00 for Tribeca Talks panels and special screenings. Single ticket sales begin Tuesday, March 29 and can be purchased online, by telephone, or at one of the Ticket Outlets, located at Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea (260 W. 23rd Street), and Brookfield Place (250 Vesey Street). The 2016 Festival will offer ticket discounts on general screenings and Tribeca Talks panels for students, seniors and select downtown Manhattan residents. Discounted tickets are available at Ticket Outlet locations only.

About the Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival, now in its 15th year, brings together visionaries across industries and diverse audiences to celebrate the power of storytelling. A platform for independent filmmaking, creative expression and immersive entertainment, Tribeca supports emerging and established voices, discovers award-winning filmmakers, curates innovative and interactive experiences, and introduces new technology and ideas through panels, premieres, exhibitions, and live performance.

Founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2001, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Tribeca has evolved from an annual event to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan to a gathering place for filmmakers, artists, innovators, and the global creative community. Through programs that embrace storytelling in all of its expansive forms – from film and music to video games and online work, TFF reimagines the cinematic experience and explores how art can unite communities.

About the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival Sponsors
As Presenting Sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival, AT&T is committed to supporting the Festival and the art of filmmaking through access and innovation – aiming to make this the most interactive film and storytelling festival in the country, where visitors experience the Festival in ways they never imagined. As one of the largest communications and entertainment companies, AT&T helps millions connect with entertainment, mobile, high speed Internet and voice services – virtually everywhere.

The Tribeca Film Festival is pleased to announce its Signature Sponsors: #ActuallySheCan by Allergan, Accenture, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Bai Beverages, Bira 91, Bloomberg Philanthropies’, Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), CHANEL, DEAN & DELUCA, EFFEN® Vodka, ESPN, Hendrick’s Gin, IBM, Infor, IWC Schaffhausen, The Lincoln Motor Company, NBC 4 New York, National CineMedia, New York Magazine, Nexxus New York Salon, Samsung, Spring Studios New York, Thompson Hotels, and United Airlines

IMAGES FOR PRESS: Film stills for the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival are available at www.image.net. If you are not an image.net media user yet, please register using referral code 2604. If you have any issues or your need is time sensitive please contact blin@TribecaFilmFestival.org

TFF Press credentials:
Credentialing for the 15th Festival is now open through March 3rd, 2016:
https://secure.sportssystems.com/events2/?eventKey=2d9e547a-f005-4ad4-bf9a-91f190842566

PRESS CONTACTS:
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