WHAT: Awards Presentation and Master’s Class to celebrate the winners of the Eighth Annual Screenwriting Competition.
WHEN: Sunday, September 26th from 4-8
WHERE: The Stuart Street Playhouse in Boston.
The event will feature a workshop with blockbuster Groundhog’s Day screenwriter, Danny Rubin, award-winning Lulu in Berlin’s writer, Susan Steinberg, and Marc Weinberg, writer for USA network, A&E. Join us for the screenwriting workshop, presentation of the awards and an opportunity to network with screenwriters, filmmakers, and film enthusiasts.
Purchase your tickets online!
$25 for the general public, $20 for students and $15 for WIFVNE members.
The Stuart Street Playhouse, is located at 200 Stuart St., Boston, MA. For directions to the theatre please go to: http://www.stuartstreetplayhouse.com/
Program funding is made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Commission and our sponsors.
The three finalists have been chosen and the Grand Prize Winner will be revealed. The Grand Prize Winner will receive a detailed script analysis and consultation from Grub Street valued at $375. All three finalists will a screenwriting software package from Final Draft, and a 6-month online script placement service by Inktip.com
In 2008, the winning WIFVNE screenplay was optioned shortly after being listed on Inktip. Headquartered in Los Angeles, InkTip is a screenplay facilitation company servicing the entertainment industry by providing screenplays and writers to producers and literary representatives in its network. InkTip confirms more than 150 script options and sales per year.
Final Draft is the number-one selling word processor specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays. It combines powerful word processing with professional script formatting in one self-contained, easy-to-use package.
Grub Street is a non-profit creative writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area. Their mission is to support creative writers at all stages of their development so that they can achieve their goals of publication, social and professional networking, gainful employment in the field, and/or personal enrichment.
The three finalists are:
DEE MACALUSO of Utah entered “Fang Fang You’re Dead.” After years as an award-winning writer in public relations and advertising, Dee joined a comedy troupe. She wrote and performed sketches, fulfilling the telling prophesy of Sister Mary Nara, “I suppose you think you’re funny, young lady.” Indeed she thought she was, but it would be years before she would figure out how to make any money at it. She has written and directed several short films and also works as an actor on TV, film and stage. She is currently writing magazine articles, a sit-com pilot and a book of humorous essays.
MONICA SURRENA (Writer/Director/Producer) of California contributed “King of the Road”. Like her characters, she is from the back woods of Western PA. Growing up, she was too young to drink, too small to cow-tip, and didn’t own a tractor. With neighbors few and far between, she had to rely a lot on her imagination for entertainment. When she graduated high school and went to college, she continued to explore, embracing art, literature, and music. At the University of Pittsburgh she focused her efforts on film studies, film production, and graphic arts as well as literature and ancient language. In 2005, she joined the production program at the University of Southern California where she has performed a multitude of roles including writing, producing, directing, cinematography, editing, production design, and casting. Though her true heart lies with writing and directing, she understands and appreciates the importance of every role and what it takes to achieve a successful film. She has just graduated with her MFA in production from USC Film School and looks forward to working professionally in the industry.
DEADRIA FARMER-PAELLMANN of New Jersey contributed “Dry Bones.” She is a legal strategist, human rights advocate, and pioneer of the movement for corporate restitution for slavery. In 2002, she filed a landmark class action lawsuit for slavery reparations against blue-chip corporations and won. Farmer-Paellmann earned her undergraduate degree in Political Science at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 1988; she completed her Masters Degree specializing in Lobbying and Political Campaign Management at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 1995; and she earned her Juris Doctorate degree from New England School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts in 1999. As a law student, she studied International Trade Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Nairobi Faculty of Law in Nairobi, Kenya 1996.
Distinguished Reader: C.C. WEBSTER is a graduate of Brandeis University with a B.A. in English and minors in Film and Creative Writing. While at Brandeis, she twice won awards for her poetry, founded and edited The Brandeis Free Press, and was published in many college journals. She has since graduated from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Film Division, with an M.F.A in Directing, with distinction from the faculty. During her time at Columbia she wrote and directed two films. Tracks (2005) depicts the story of Frizzy, a bear of a woman who inherits a crappy car from her estranged father. Full of colorful characters, non-traditional families, and a bit of environmental science—Tracks stars Tony Award-Winning Actress, Becky Ann Baker. The film was in competition at numerous film festivals, and won Best Short awards at the Artsfest Film Festival and the Quittapahilla Film Festival. Civil War (2006), winner of the 2005 Lifetime Development Grant, has played over fifty festivals internationally, including the Seattle Film Festival where it was recently chosen as “Short of the Day.” Civil War tells the story of a group of twelve-year old girls on a field trip to the battlefield of Gettysburg and the mutiny which happens between them. She is currently working on feature film projects – MISSING, Winner of the 2010 American Scandinavian Society’s Cultural Grant, which was also invited to participate in the 2010 Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference. She is also the founder and director of the DRIVE-IN Film Festival. In its third year, the festival’s mission is to bring independent films to small towns across America, while celebrating the dying art of the local Drive-In. www.driveinfilmfestival.com
Workshop Panelists: DANNY RUBIN’S screenwriting credits include “Hear No Evil,” “S.F.W.,” and “Groundhog Day,” which earned him the British Academy Award for Best Screenplay and the Critics’ Circle Award for Screenwriter of the Year. He was also honored by the Writers Guild of America and the American Film Institute. He has been a professor of screenwriting at the University of Illinois, Columbia College, and the National High School Institute. He has also taught at the Sundance Institute in Utah and the PAL Screenwriting Lab in England. He is currently the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on Screenwriting at Harvard University.
DR. SUSAN STEINBERG’S screenwriting and film credits include Lulu in Berlin, funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, screened at the Directors’ Guild of America, the Telluride film festival and distributed on DVD by Criterion Collections Films; Our Time in the Garden was screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, awarded a Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation Grant and was an American Film Institute (AFI) selection for a national tour; Rites of Passage won second prize at the San Francisco Erotic Film Festival; Her film script treatment, Mistaken Identity, was an invited submission to the Sundance Screenwriting Competition where it was a finalist. For the past decade she has taught screenwriting in the Writing Program of the Harvard University Summer School. Currently, Dr. Steinberg is at work on a book on writing about film.
MARC WEINBERG worked as a story analyst for 20th Century Fox, MGM, and Interscope Communications at the start of his career. After earning an MFA from UCLA’s acclaimed screenwriting program, he transitioned into professional writing. He gained esteem through successful scripts on the USA Network and A&E. Further television credits include episodic writing for the Discovery Channel. He has also sold scripts and story ideas to producers such as Dick Clark and Citadel Entertainment.
The WIFV/NE Screenwriting Competition aims to promote the work of women screenwriters and support the creation of worthy film roles for women. Entries must be authored or co-authored by a woman and/or feature a woman or women in prominent roles.
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