Tonight the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) announced the winner of the first ever TFI Sloan Filmmaker Prize, Newton’s Laws of Emotion. The project will receive a $10,000 cash prize that will be used to help bring the film closer to completion. The prize was awarded by a jury comprised of film and science luminaries in order to further support a project that has the most potential to succeed in fulfilling the program’s mission of advancing a greater public understanding of science.
The project was chosen from the four 2013 Sloan Filmmaker Fund recipients. Those recipients were awarded a total of $140,000 in grants earlier in the month. Each of the projects integrates science and technology themes and characters into their storylines. The grant recipients will also receive year-round mentorship from science experts and members of the film industry in order to complete their projects.
Newton’s Laws of Emotion (Eugene Ramos, Screenwriter; Andeep Singh, Producer) follows a young Isaac Newton as he pursues the affections of a headstrong princess and seeks to uncover the principles of love using his new system of mathematics. However, his equations start to break down when her former lover enters the scene.
The 2013 jury members included actors Clark Middleton (Kill Bill: Vol. II, Sin City), Ron Livingston (Office Space, Band of Brothers), Dean Winters (“Oz,” “30 Rock,” “Rescue Me”), Helen Fisher, PhD, biological anthropologist; and John Quackenbusch, Harvard professor of computational biology and bioinformatics.
“We have selected four amazing TFI/Sloan film projects this year but we are especially thrilled to award the first ever TFI Sloan Filmmaker Prize to Newton’s Laws of Emotion,” said Doron Weber, Vice President, Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “It gives us a brilliant, swashbuckling and romantic Isaac Newton whose personal emotions color his scientific theories –and vice versa—and shows yet again how science is a quintessentially human enterprise that translates into great storytelling and box office magic.”
“Isaac Newton is a remarkable figure in the scientific community and we are proud to champion a project that explores Newton’s brilliance and character,” said Tamir Muhammad, Director of Feature Programming, TFI. “This prize will give the project additional resources to bring an interest in his work to a wider audience.”
In addition to the TFI/Sloan Filmmaker Prize, the TAA Creative Promise Awards and the alumni grants were presented at an evening reception at MEGU in Manhattan on April 24, 2013.