Tribeca Announces $20,000 Heineken Affinity Award To Support African-American Filmmakers

Heineken USA and the Tribeca Film Institute have announced their partnership to establish and launch the Heineken Affinity Award. The award, which aims to empower and recognize a working generation of African American filmmakers and encourage them to continue to craft stories that share their experiences and visions, will launch during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Heineken USA will host a private launch event on April 27th to raise awareness about the program. The winner of the Heineken Affinity Award, a rising African-American filmmaker (age 21 and over) will be honored with a $20,000 cash award and year round project support and professional development from the Tribeca Film Institute.

“Heineken is ecstatic to launch the first-ever Affinity Award with the prestigious Tribeca Film Institute,” said Carolyn Concepcion, Brand Manager of Heineken. “Heineken prides itself as a brand that opens the world to our consumers through unique and unexpected experiences. We hope to use the first-ever Affinity Award as a platform to further expose the work of talented African-American filmmakers.”

Heineken and the Tribeca Film Institute will survey a wide range of industry executives to nominate an African-American filmmaker who exhibits great creative potential and will benefit from extra exposure and resources for their next creative project. Based on the nominations, the Tribeca Film Institute will invite filmmakers over the age of 21 to apply for the award.

“The Tribeca Film Institute is excited to partner with Heineken on the Affinity Award and continue to provide support for working filmmakers from communities that are underrepresented in the film industry,” said Tamir Muhammad, Feature Programming Director of Tribeca Film Institute. “We look forward to seeing the submissions for the Affinity Award and announcing the winner in 2013 alongside Heineken.”

Submissions will be judged on how well it fulfills the mission of the Tribeca Film Institute, the quality and strength of the proposal, the potential for international and US distribution, as well as the filmmakers’ previous body of work. The Affinity Award winner will be announced during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

For more information about the Heineken Affinity Award please visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org, @TribecaFilmFest or follow Heineken on Twitter at @Heineken_US.