2020 Tribeca NOW Creators Market

The NOW (New Online Work) section, sponsored by HBO, will host its fifth annual private industry market that brings together leading online, episodic and immersive storytellers (2020 NOW Showcase creators, 2020 TribecaTV Pilot Season creators and an additional curated group of online, indie episodic and VR writers/performers/influencers) to pitch new projects to a wide-range of industry, including distributors, production companies, streamers, and online platforms.

The NOW Creators Market will take place virtually April 21 and 22, 2020, setting up hundreds of 20-minute, video pitch meetings between Creators and Industry looking to collaborate on future projects.

NOW SHOWCASE

Tribeca’s New Online Work (NOW) section highlights independent filmmakers who create original, short form and episodic work specifically for the online exhibition space. Previous inclusions in the NOW section include High Maintenance (Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair), The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo (Brian Jordan Alvarez), You’re So Talented (Sam Bailey), Dinette (Shaina Feinberg) and Kiss of the Rabbit God (Andrew Thomas Huang). This year’s slate includes episodic, short form and documentary work from up-and-coming and seasoned filmmakers.

The following group of filmmakers participating in the virtual N.O.W. Creators Market were to debut their work as part of the 2020 Tribeca New Online Work Showcase:

Mike Bender and Doug Chernack

Awkward Family Photos

Mike Bender is the co-founder of AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, the bestselling author of Awkward Family Photos, and screenwriter and co-producer of Not Another Teen Movie. Doug Chernack is the co-founder of AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, bestselling author of Awkward Family Photos, and a creator and producer for E!, Fox Sports, and the Golf Channel.

Tomás Gómez Bustillo

Museum of Fleeting Wonders

Tomás Gómez Bustillo was born in Buenos Aires. He earned a degree in political science in Buenos Aires and his MFA in directing at the American Film Institute Conservatory. His work screened at Slamdance and Montreal World Film Festival. He is developing his feature debut, The Death of Irma Lopez.

Lance Edmands

The Seeker

Lance Edmands was born in Maine and graduated from NYU. His first feature as writer and director, Bluebird, premiered at Tribeca in 2013; Factory 25 and Sundance Artist Services then released theatrically. Edmands also directs and edits commercials. The Seeker is his first documentary.

Curtis Essel

Allumuah

Curtis Essel is a director of 33 Bound; a visual production company based in London. He consciously desires to leave his audience with a little more knowledge than when they began. Imparting viewers with insight is an integral part of his process whilst showcasing the personal human experiences to anyone who comes by his work.

Keylee Koop-Sudduth and Micah Sudduth

Backsliders

Keylee Koop-Sudduth and Micah Sudduth are a married couple of filmmakers originally from the Bible Belt. They believe stories are medicine, so they created Bob Billiams Productions to help themselves heal. Drawing from their rural backgrounds, they craft authentic stories that are a unique balance of humor and heart.

Britt Lower and Alex Knell

Circus Person

Britt Lower is a multi-disciplinary filmmaker and artist. Circus Person, which she wrote and stars in, is her directorial debut. She plays opposite Patricia Arquette in the upcoming Ben Stiller-directed series, Severance. Her other credits include High Maintenance, Man Seeking Woman, Casual, and Mr. Roosevelt. Alex Knell works to handcraft rich stories across new tech, film and live formats. Trained in physical theater (Lecoq), she has designed visual storytelling for 100+ filmmakers.

Héctor Silva Núñez & Lu Urdaneta

Home

Héctor Silva Núñez is a Venezuelan filmmaker based in Chile. His works premiered at Cannes, Toronto International Film Festival, and Tribeca. He is developing his first narrative feature. Lu Urdaneta is a Venezuelan-American actress and producer based in Miami. Her production company, Alef, develops the first vertical series in Spanglish.

Alden Nusser and Ben Fries

Dying Business

Alden Nusser and Ben Fries grew up together in Manhattan and began working together as filmmakers in 2015. Coming from documentary and music video/commercial backgrounds, respectively, their first collaboration, Crime Cutz, premiered at Tribeca in 2018. They're the founding partners of the creative production company Field Agency.

Ava Warbrick

Bobbie Blood

Ava Warbrick's documentary Stephanie in the Water premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2013. Her work has been featured by Artist Television Access, Anthology Film Archives, Light Industry, Nowness, Vogue, and Netflix. Warbrick serves on the Kesselring Prize Committee for Playwriting and is a graduate of Bard College.

PILOT SEASON

Tribeca continued its tradition of opening submissions to independently produced TV pilots in 2020. The following group of filmmakers participating in the virtual N.O.W. Creators Market were to debut their pilots as part of the 2020 Tribeca TV Pilot Season program:

Shelby Bartelstein

Pretty People

Shelby Bartelstein is beyond grateful to Tribeca 2020 for including Pretty People in the Indie Pilot Showcase. Shelby penned, directed and stars in the pilot, which follows two best friends whose budding romance is tested when weight comes into play

Che Grayson

Magic Hour

Che Grayson is a filmmaker, writer and TED speaker. Her award-winning films have shown internationally, and her writing has been published by Teen Vogue, Image Comics and IDW Publishing. As a graduate of New York University’s MFA film program, she has written, directed and produced while studying under the mentorship of Spike Lee andKasi Lemmons. Che is a 2016 TED resident, a 2017 IFP Marcie Bloom Film Fellow with Sony Picture Classics and a 2018 Directing Fellow with Ryan Murphy's Half Initiative. Most recently Che began developing a series for TV, Magic Hour, starring Indya Moore (POSE).

Emily Kron and Kate Hopkins

Deceased Ones

Emily Kron and Kate Hopkins are an exuberant two-headed creative team, writing, directing and producing television, film and digital media with their company Grandma's Beach House Productions. They have collaborated on several films, series, music videos and comedy sketches, focusing on female-centric stories that are usually funny and unusually weird!

Scott Turner Schofield

Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps: But What About The Children

Named a “Trans Influencer of Hollywood” by OUT Magazine, Scott Turner Schofield is an award-winning actor, writer and producer. Critically-acclaimed for his roles on CBS’s The Bold And The Beautiful and Amazon Prime’s Studio City, Schofield received international notice for his leading role in the 2018 feature film The Conductor (Splendid Films). He currently consults for HBO’s Euphoria among other projects. His one man show—Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps, funded by the National Performance Network and the Princess Grace Foundation-USA—is now a groundbreaking multimedia project.

Mike Ott

Unemployable

Mike Ott studied under Thom Andersen at the California Institute of the Arts where he received his Masters of Fine Arts degree in Film/Video. His films have won numerous awards, including the Audience award at AFI Fest, a Gotham Award for "Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You,” and in 2011 he won the “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award. Mike is currently in production on his hybrid feature California Dreams.

ADDITIONAL N.O.W. CREATORS MARKET PARTICIPANTS

Amir Admoni and Fabito Rychter

Amir Admoni and Fabito Rychter have been working together for the last 10 years. The partnership yielded movies, TV shows, and plays that have collected 71 international awards and traveled to more than 120 festivals. Gravity VR is their first virtual reality project together.

Enrique Agudo

Enrique Agudo’s work explores the limits of digital media. With a background in architecture, Agudo evolved into speculative worldbuilding, moving from architectural projects to research-driven fictional narratives. His work looks at future anthropological issues, identity, sexuality, and humanities through animation, new media art, creative direction, or VR.

Nitzan Bartov and Char Simpson

Nitzan Bartov is an architect and game designer. Her work in XR, interactive, and spatial media mixes pop culture, sci-fi, and mysticism to explore relationships between humans and technology. Char Simpson is a writer and a video artist. They write interactive fiction and devise narrative formulas for immersive experiences.

Anna Bierhaus

Anna Bierhaus is a writer living in NYC, and her scripts have regularly placed in ScreenCraft, Creative World Awards, and Final Draft, among others, and gone on to Sundance’s second round.

Common Table Creative

Oliver English, Simon English and Jamer Bellis

Common Table Creative works with the world's leading food and beverage companies, NGOs and nonprofits to tell stories about the power of food. We create short films and long-form documentaries about food, driving consumers to support the companies, businesses, and politicians of the future.

Bianca Cristovao

Bianca Cristovao is a writer, performer, and creator based in Los Angeles. Originally from the Czech Republic's capital, she gained recognition for her stand up performance about diversity and immigration.

Nicole Dawson

Nicole Dawson is a New York-based storyteller and graduate of NYU Tisch. Writing primarily for young adult audiences, her stories are grounded in visceral settings and dynamic female protagonists.

Stanley Erhart

Stanley Erhart (@lastmanstanley) is an undergraduate at Tulane University pursuing a BS in digital media production. Stanley uploads short form abstract videos on the social media app TikTok.

Matthew K Esolda & Brian Goodheart

Matthew K. Esolda and Brian Goodheart are Emergency Contact, a creative/directing duo with over a decade of experience in advertising and content creation. They are friendly and are very excited to meet you.

Valeria Forster & Mercedes Cordova

In 2012, Mercedes Córdova and Valeria Forster founded Brava Cine, a production company based in Buenos Aires, with the purpose of developing and promoting audiovisual projects by female directors.

Léa Furnion

New York writer/filmmaker Léa Furnion likes making things, an idea that inhabits her series pilot, a handy-focused neo-practical voyage to a love for eco-living, a topic of her upcoming novel.

Malerie Grady & James Mackenzie

Malerie Grady and James Mackenzie are filmmakers from Atlanta, Georgia. They developed Tough Love from a back-alley comedy sketch to a character-driven dating web series that premiered at Outfest 2019.

Caleb Hearon

Caleb Hearon is a Chicago-based comedian at whom nobody has ever been mad. He performs every week at iO Chicago, Second City, The Hideout, and on Twitter, if video monologues count. Caleb is an NBCUniversal Bob Curry Fellow and produces iO's weekly sketch and current events show, Studio Eleven. He's originally from Missouri where he was raised by four strong women—his mother, Kellie, and the Dixie Chicks.

Sami Kriegstein Jacobson

Sami Kriegstein Jacobson is an award-winning director, producer, and multimedia-artist (HuffPost, Spotify, InStyle, Complex, YouTubePremium) who moonlights as a digital branded content consultant, which sounds vague but is real, Dad, I swear.

Jennifer Levinson

Jennifer Levinson’s written and produced content has amassed 100 million views across BuzzFeed Video, VRScout, and CryptTV. Formerly a writer on the show Solve, Jennifer now has five projects in production.

Jonathan Aubrie Lewis

Jonathan Aubrie Lewis is an award winning (2019 AT&T Film Awards Underrepresented Winner) filmmaker who has been a professional director for the past eight years. His most recent film, Sojourn, is an intimate exploration of black male identity. It has screened at Atlanta Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Holly Shorts and most notably, The National Museum of African American History & Culture, a part of the Smithsonian African American Film Festival.

Bunny Michael & Omega

Bunny Michael and Omega are multidisciplinary artists and collaborators. Their work which displayed at The Whitney, Tate Modern, and MOMA PS1 has been featured in NY Times and ArtForum.

Raqi Syed & Areito Echevarria

Raqi Syed and Areito Echevarria are visual effects artists and researchers whose work combines visual storytelling and new technologies. They have contributed to films such as Avatar and The Hobbit series. They are both practitioners in immersive reality and currently teach at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

Adam Waheed

Adam Waheed is a comedian, actor and content creator, from Queens, New York. He most recently wrote, produced, and starred in the short film, Tribes, which was an official selection for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. He also starred in the Comedy Central series, Pitch Please, which is live on Comedy Central’s Facebook page. Adam has also worked with high-end brands like T-Mobile, Old Spice, Mountain Dew, Call of Duty and more.

Micah Ariel Watson

Micah Ariel Watson is a filmmaker and playwright from Wichita, KS. Her work centers the sacred and secular in Black culture. She will receive her MFA from NYU spring 2020.

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