Congratulations to John Otterbacher (faculty, Film & Broadcast) and Alisha Lillion and Elena Rubin (2010 Tribeca Flashpoint Academy graduates), who all have short films featured this weekend at the Chicago Latino Film Festival!

Both these short films – Rooftop Wars (co-produced by John Otterbacher) and The First and Only Lesson (crew members included 2010 Graduates Alisha Lillion and Elena Rubin) will be showing together as part of a set this weekend.

Details about both films and a link to purchase tickets are below.

Friday, April 8th
4:30pm
Landmark Century Centre Cinema
2828 N Clark Street, Chicago

Saturday, April 9th
1:45pm
Instituto Cervantes
31 W. Ohio, Chicago

For more information, or to purchase tickets, click here.

Sometimes old stuff (even 230 million years old) is new all over again – to us anyway.  Today, Paul Sereno, University of Chicago paleontologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, announced his latest discovery here at Tribeca Flashpoint.

Paul Sereno Unveils New Dinosaur at Tribeca Flashpoint

Eodromaeus, the “dawn runner” was small – weighing only 10-15 pounds.  But this pint-sized meat eater was fierce, with “stabbing canine teeth” – and an early ancestor of the legendary Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Sereno, who has previously spoken to Tribeca Flashpoint students at one of our JumpStart presentations, is unique not only for his discoveries, but also for the ways that he is using new technology to promote science and education.

In his previous presentation, one of his team members showed how the team use animation techniques to demonstrate what the dinosaurs looked and moved like.  For today’s announcement, Sereno was broadcasting live from Tribeca Flashpoint, and he responded in real time to questions about the discovery posted on Twitter.

Eodromaeus Head Model and Skeleton

Paul Sereno Speaks to Students

To read the story from ABC News Chicago, please visit: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7896887

JumpStarts are always about learning. Today’s was not just about learning, but also about giving back.

Scott Case, President & CEO of Malaria no more, presented over 100 Tribeca Flashpoint students with a unique JumpStart this morning: instead of the usual speaker presentation and Q&A, he presented a challenge: Come up with an innovative, fresh way to persuade the public to join the fight to end malaria by 2015.

Nine student groups were each presented with a different audience – from tweens to African parents to the United States Congress – and a specific message targeting how that group can help. Groups were given 30 minutes to brainstorm and storyboard one or more concepts for how they would spread the message.

With only 30 minutes, our Flashpoint students’ creativity really shined – the concepts ranged from a Facebook game where users could “Swat the mosquitoes” to virtually save their Facebook friends from malaria to powerful PSA’s using chalk drawings of children to show that small donations could save a child – but our Congress can save thousands more.

Case told the group that in just 30 minutes they had developed more new concepts and ideas than Malaria No More had been able to develop in the last year, and that all of the ideas would be taken back to the home office for further development.