I am excited to announce that we recently finalized Arts Engine’s partnership with Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) for the Tribeca Youth Screening Series!

TFI and Arts Engine decided to team up to present Media That Matters Festival films with selected feature-length films that will be taken into public high-school classrooms and Tribeca Cinemas, free of charge, across New York City.

Lisa Lucas, who runs the Program for TFI, could be one of the most relentlessly energetic and passionate people I have met so far in my work here at Arts Engine. She has taken on this huge project (amongst others) out of pure excitement for the idea, so we were happy to share some of the workload by curating and providing the Media That Matters component to the series.

The basic idea behind TFI is to supplement media with educational training and dialog; an idea which is fully embraced by Media That Matters. I was also really impressed with Lisa’s choice of difficult and quite rare films, selecting them out of a desire to expose youth audiences to films they wouldn’t generally be inclined, or expected, to go and see. Knowing how often films are “dumbed down” to young people, having faith in their ability to watch and appreciate difficult films was an attitude that really appealed to me, and something that we strive for with our Festival films.

And so the first season of Arts Engine & TFI’s joint Tribeca Youth Screening Series will open with a Teacher Training Course in mid-September to assist teachers on how to effectively use the films and materials provided. We will be there to provide information about Arts Engine’s work, and assistance on how to bring Media That Matters into the classroom.

Selected Media That Matters shorts will then be sent into the classrooms along with guides to assist in facilitating discussion, as well as information on ways in which students can become active on the issues covered in the film. The students will then attend feature screenings at Tribeca Cinema locations that cover a topic related to the MTM film. We will be in attendance for the Q&A and discussion following each featured screening, along with available filmmakers and affiliated organizations.

The Fall series starts in September with a screening of Arctic Son, a Big Mouth Films production that glimpses into the generational and culture gap that is affecting livelihoods in the disappearing Arctic Circle. This will be accompanied by Sixth annual Media That Matter’s film, The Rules of the Game. October will be a screening of War / Dance, a film following a dance festival in Uganda during the 20-year civil war which Seventh annual Media That Matters film Rapping at Fear will accompany. November will be a screening of the classic Black Orpheus; an award winning film that innovatively retells the mythological story of Orpheus and Eurydice by setting it in the midst of Carnival in Rio, Brazil. Accompanying this film will be Fourth annual Media That Matters film, Novela, Novela. December will be a collection of International Youth short films; GlobalEYES, presented by Listen Up! This will be supplemented by Seventh annual Media That Matters film, Garbage Dreams.

Please check back for more information on next season’s collection, and to view the official website, please visit the Tribeca Film Institute.