New York startup Kickstarter helped fund more than a dozen movies at the Tribeca Film Festival. The power of crowdfunding in arts! It’s also remarkable that this year this quintessential NY festival – born out of the desire to revitalize downtown Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – shows so many movies created with high-tech and Internet tools.

<<“Tricked,” directed by Paul Verhoeven (“Total Recall”) has a user-generated screenplay: every four-minute scene was written by a different person, culled from 30,000 participants>>, explains Rachel Dodes on the WSJ. Other examples: <<Inspired by the novel ways filmmakers are creating, financing and distributing their films, Tribeca added “Storyscapes,” a new competition section this year which will showcase “interactive, Web-based or cross-platform” content that defies traditional linear storytelling models.>>

<<Other Storyscapes selections include “A Journal of Insomnia” described as “a large, interactive fresco that combines hundreds of personal reflections on sleepless nights.” It was created using online submissions from insomniacs all over the world, who told their stories via webcam, email or voice recording. All of the installations, which are free and open to the public, will be shown at a “House of Imagination” on Varick Street from April 19 through 21.>>

In our book “Tech and the City“ we tell the story of Kickstarter in Chapter 6: “The Boheme of the Third Millennium – East Village, Soho and Lower Manhattan”.<<A completely atypical exchange, where you can finance the most disparate dreams is Kickstarter. Here Mark, the protagonist of Rent, could have gathered enough money to produce his documentary.>>