Robert De Niro began the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 to rejuvenate and reenergize Lower Manhattan. For the last four years, the festival has helped up-and-coming filmmakers get their projects off the ground.

This year, 32 narrative films were chosen for Tribeca All-Access (TAA) -- a program designed to help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities.

Milwaukee mother/son writing pair Dr. Fran Kaplan and Aaron Greer are heading off to New York for TAA with producers Tony Ferraro and Brad Pruitt, with the screenplay for "Fruit of the Tree" in hand.

"The Tribeca Film Festival is one of the 10 largest and best-known film festivals in the world," Kaplan says. "The All Access Program is a way for Tribeca to help screenwriters of color get access to people in the film industry, and to help get their films made."

Greer says that the most difficult part of getting a film off the ground is obtaining the neccessary resources.

"The TAA program is about providing a select group of filmmakers with that access. It puts you in the room with producers, production companies and other industry reps who you normally would never get to talk to no matter how good your idea is, and it gives them (the industry) an opportunity to find new talent."

Film festivals have been used to serve that purpose for decades, but TAA takes it to another level by working in the earliest stages of the filmmaking process, starting with the screenplays.

"If I called HBO and said I've got a script I think you might be interested in, I'd likely get a polite 'thanks, but no thanks' reply -- most companies, actors and producers don't even accept those calls unless they come from agents or famous and long established directors," he says. "However, the TAA program will put me in a room with folks like HBO and get them an excerpt of my script, so that at least it's got a fighting chance to be considered."

"Fruit of the Tree" is based on the story of the late Dr. James Cameron, founder of America's Black Holocaust Museum, 2233 N. 4th St.

"It's an incredibly unusual and dramatic story. It's the true story of the only known survivor of a lynching and how he lived his life after going through this awful trauma," Kaplan says. "He's one of those people that has worked for civil rights and racial harmony for years and years and is kind of one of those unsung heroes. He's not Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks but he has been working on this since the early 1950s and founded a lot of NAACP chapters and he risked his life and I think he should be known about."

The writing pair chose Cameron as their focus for several reasons, including his surviving a lynching.

"The fact that he could emerge from this incredibly traumatic experience unscathed by hatred, and in fact turn that experience into a drive to promote healing, understanding and learning is incredible," Greer says. "His story illustrates both the best and the worst of human nature, the triumphs and the tragedies of the American experience, makes it compelling. Also, I think the fact that Cameron's lynching happened in the North points to the fact that this battle with race and justice has not been a uniquely Southern experience, but has infected our entire country. Finally, Cameron happens to be the last known survivor of a lynching, so his is a story is unique and historically significant."

Kaplan says that the group is ecstatic over being chosen by TAA, especially being in the Midwest where places like Milwaukee are somehow marked as a "fly over zone." But this isn't the first time Greer and Kaplan have headed to Tribeca. A little over three years ago, they were screening the film "Gettin' Grown" as a completed work.

"I imagine that the experience of going to the festival will be much different this time," Greer says. "As opposed to talking with audiences and responding to questions about the completed film, which is what I did last time at the festival, this time we'll be meeting with producers, executives (and) agents who are potentially interested in producing our screenplay."

The group is excited for what's to come. With the Cameron family behind them, the are ready to bring "Fruit of the Tree" to the next level.

"We had incredible cooperation from the Cameron family. (James) died in June and we were able to interview him and his family on tape. We got the last interviews he ever gave with his life," Kaplan says. "He signed a life rights options contract with us on his deathbed, 16 hours before he died, which is a dramatic event in itself. We have a lot of hope for this film being a film that will attract A-list actors, be able to do well financially with the film and have a lot of people see it."

For now, the writing pair has to wait to see where the TAA program will lead, but they already have a few new ideas in mind.

"Each of them is in the development stage, meaning we have basic story ideas and structure laid out but haven't completed the screenplay, so it's kind of premature to discuss them in detail, but we definitely hope to continue writing and hopefully use the success of 'Fruit of the Tree' to launch these other projects," Greer says.

Greer and Kaplan make it clear that they have a tie with Milwaukee and want to hold on to that.

"We do have a commitment to continue doing work in Milwaukee," Greer says. "We had such a good experience producing 'Gettin' Grown' there and we'd like to be a part of the continued growth of the Wisconsin filmmaking community."