BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Gin Sparks Imagination In Film At The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival

CORAL GABLES, Fla., April 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- In its second consecutive year as a signature sponsor, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® gin announces Storyscapes, an innovative collaboration with Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) to uncover new, groundbreaking visions in film. With its multimedia platform, Storyscapes celebrates new trends in digital media. The goal of the program is to recognize filmmakers and content creators who employ an interactive, web-based or cross-platform approach to story creation.

"Watching a movie used to be a passive activity, but now with smartphones, touch screens, and information all around, an exciting new world of storytelling has emerged," said Ned Duggan, Brand Director, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin. "BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin has been on the cutting edge of design, fashion, cocktail mixology, and culture. With Storyscapes and the new BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Transmedia Award, the brand is excited to bring the same innovation and forward thinking to Tribeca Film Festival."

Curated by TFF Programming team along with Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives for the Tribeca Film Institute, Storyscapes (http://www.tribecafilm.com/storyscapes) will present five selections at an interactive installation called the BOMBAY SAPPHIRE House of Imagination (121 Varick Street, 7th Floor, entrance on Dominick Street between Hudson and Varick Streets) from April 18 – April 21, 2013.

The BOMBAY SAPPHIRE House of Imagination will encourage interactive participation with the five Storyscapes selections (listed below). Guests will immerse themselves in This Exquisite Forest - creating animations and sharing them. They can have a conversation with a Robots in Residence, or watch a movie that the robots have made. They can experience first-hand the destruction, pain, and incredible spirit of hope that has risen from the ashes, post-Hurricane Sandy with Sandy Storyline. They can reenact their favorite scene from The Empire Strikes Back with the Star Wars Uncut team, and experience a touch of sleeplessness with A Journal of Insomnia. The exhibition will be a place to experience and reflect on these new approaches to storytelling while enjoying signature BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin cocktails – whether personally crafted from an array of artisanal botanicals and tonics at the interactive 'make your own' BOMBAY SAPPHIRE East Gin & Tonic Reimagined cocktail bar – or created by some of the best mixologists in the country.

"The possibilities for telling stories are evolving and our aim is to create an immersive space where this participatory, transmedia work can be experienced," said Ingrid Kopp. "The unique and innovative idea was created collaboratively with BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin over the past 18 months, and I am honored to have been a part of this Festival-first. I cannot think of a better location than New York City for such a vibrant conversation around this emerging art form. We look forward to building a community in this space where storytelling and technology, and authorship and openness, meet."

Storyscapes was established as a new juried section at Tribeca Film Festival to spotlight innovative, interactive, transmedia work across genres. The BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Award for Transmedia will honor one of these projects, and will be presented at the Tribeca Awards Night on April 25, 2013.

In addition to Storyscapes and the BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Award for Transmedia, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin has fostered a burgeoning presence in film via a collaborative narrative project with Academy Award® winning screenwriter, Geoffrey Fletcher, called "The Imagination Series: Film." This inspiring program, launched during the brand's inaugural year as a sponsor of Tribeca Film Festival, will continue its presence in 2013 by premiering the five short film projects that most successfully interpret an original short film script by Fletcher. Following the screenings, the 2013 Imagination Series competition will be announced and another set of aspiring filmmakers will receive the singular challenge of bringing a new short film script to life.

OFFICIAL TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2013 STORYSCAPES SELECTIONS:

THIS EXQUISITE FOREST

Conceived by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin and produced by Google and Tate Modern, This Exquisite Forest was inspired by the surrealist game "exquisite corpse" and its idea of collaborative creation. The project, hosted at exquisiteforest.com, allows visitors to create short animations in their web browser. Other users may build on the animation at any point, creating a collection of navigable, branching narratives resembling trees that grow bigger as more artists contribute.

A JOURNAL OF INSOMNIA

Insomniacs are both spectators and actors in this large, interactive fresco that combines accounts of sleepless nights, gathered online since fall 2012. The Internet served as confessional for users to share their personal impressions and reflections on what kept them awake. This resulting work provides a cutting portrait of insomnia as a universal and peculiarly wide-ranging affliction and challenges visitors to experience the condition for themselves.

ROBOTS IN RESIDENCE

Robots in Residence challenges Alfred Hitchcock's claim that "in feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." Here there is no God, as pre-programmed robots collaborate with festival audiences to direct and shoot a documentary in its entirety. Robot artist Alexander Reben and filmmaker Brent Hoff forge a provocative new form of documentary storytelling by using robots as a lens through which we take a new look at humanity.

SANDY STORYLINE

Using audio, photography, text and video, Sandy Storyline is an ever-growing documentary narrative as community members and volunteers offer their accounts of the storm and the efforts to recover and rebuild local neighborhoods. The project forges a new type of media in time of crisis, one that is participatory, interactive and designed for community empowerment.

STAR WARS UNCUT

Love Star Wars, but think you would have done it differently? Then this fun, creative and wonderfully nostalgic interactive media project is for you. Using everything from hand-drawn animations to intricate reenactments, fans and series novices created short alternatives to the Star Wars storyline and went online to piece them all together. Discover a whole new approach to Star Wars, one fifteen-second burst at a time.

About BOMBAY SAPPHIRE

BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® is the fastest growing premium gin in the world and world's number one premium gin by value.  BOMBAY SAPPHIRE is created with a unique combination of ten hand-selected botanicals, sourced from around the globe. The brand's global essence and signature vapor infusion process impart a refined and perfectly balanced taste, versatile enough for both classic cocktails and exotic recipes.  INFUSED WITH IMAGINATION®, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE is a symbol of the exploration of worldly and sophisticated lifestyles. For more information, please explore www.bombaysapphire.com. 

BE BRILLIANT AND INSPIRED. DRINK RESPONSIBLY!

©2013 BOMBAY SAPPHIRE AND INFUSED WITH IMAGINATION ARE TRADEMARKS.
IMPORTED BY THE BOMBAY SPIRITS COMPANY U.S.A., CORAL GABLES, FL.  GIN - 47% ALC. BY VOL

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