Tribeca Film Festival

Friday, May 2-------With all the films being screened in a concentrated 10 days at the Tribeca Film Festival, it takes a mix of courage and chutzpah to organize a staged reading to attract distribution and financing interest. But that's exactly what the powers that be at Paradigm Shift Productions and Streamline Filmworks pulled off this past Monday.

The film in question is MONEY MATTERS from award-winning short film director Ryan Richmond. The presentation included a showing of the short film of the same title and the expanded feature film version as a staged reading. The event took place at the City Cinemas Village East (the same theater that hosted the Press and Industry screenings).

MONEY MATTERS is a coming-of-age story about a 14 year-old biracial girl, Monique Matters, who is trying to navigate faith and sexuality in a dysfunctional single-mother household in the rough waters of Washington D.C. When her mother's disturbing past comes to light, the teenage girl, who never knew her white father, now a priest, must face the devastating circumstances of long kept secrets and somehow reconcile her familial relationships before it’s too late.

The short film version of MONEY MATTERS (2001)  played at a number of international film festivals, and was nominated for the IFP Gordon Parks Award and won the Princess Grace Award for Young Filmmakers. The feature version is produced by Mark E. Downie (HUNDRED PERCENT) and executive produced by Sam Pollard, who produced the Spike Lee documentary on Hurricane Katrina, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE. For more information, contact Mark E. Downie of Paradigm Shift Productions, email: MEDlit4flm@aol.com or log on to the website: www.streamlinefilmworks.com

Sandy Mandelberger, Tribeca FF Dailies Editor