Fall 2003 Newsletter
Screenwriting Competition
Fall 2003
Sabina Ansari • The Colors of Concrete
Sabina wrote all her life without ever giving it serious consideration as a career. Born and raised in Pakistan, she attended university in Chicago and got a BA in Psychology. She took that to New York city and applied it to planning strategy for advertising campaigns. Three years and many all-nighters later, it finally dawned on her that the only thing that had preserved her sanity was writing. So she quit her job, moved to Vancouver and took a screenwriting course at Vancouver Film School. This is her first screenplay.
The Colors of Concrete is the coming of age story of Rania, a 13 year-old upper class Pakistani girl, whose best friend is a servant boy called Ahmad. When Rania's mother discovers this, she forbids her from meeting him. Rania finds elaborate ways to go behind her mother's back, but all that does is create serious trouble for Ahmad. Society dictates that, along with her childhood, Rania must say goodbye to her closest friend. But she decides she's not going down without a fight.
Debra Chesley • A Straight Shot of Sunshine
Debra Chesley has been studying and practicing the craft of screenwriting in Edmonton for over 10 years now and has just had her short script Wind Water shot in the city this past summer. She spent two seasons in the story department of the locally produced half-hour family television series Mentors, in addition to working as a freelance and staff script analyst for the past four years. A Straight Shot of Sunshine is the third feature film Debra has written.
A Straight Shot of Sunshine is the story of an otherwise composed young woman who has her staid life blown wide open when she agrees to marry a publicity-hungry movie star on a whim, during a wild weekend with friends in Las Vegas.
Zoe Hopkins • Cherry Blossoms
Zoe began her career as an actor, appearing in many roles for feature film, television and for the stage. She graduated from Ryerson Polytechnic University with a B.A.A. in Film Studies in 1997. Since then, Zoe has worked in Canada's film and television industry as a writer, director, and producer - including having directed 26 episodes of a children's television series, and serving as Senior Producer on a 13 part documentary series about Aboriginal youth. Zoe's writings have been shortlisted for the Signature Shorts series and for the Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program. Zoe is writer/director of two short films: Prayer for a Good Day and One-Eyed Dogs Are Free. Prayer for a Good Day will be screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Cherry Blossoms: A coming of age story about a Native girl coming to terms with traditions while unearthing family secrets. Writer/Director: Zoe Leigh Hopkins. Advisor: Tricia Fish
Joadie Jurgova • Suicide by Cop
Joadie Jurgova has worked as an actress in theatre and film in both Canada and Europe. She was one of the original members of The North American Theatre in Prague. Her first screenplay, Rabbit Fall, won the 2002 WIFT-T /CBC Emerging Screenwriter's Award. Suicide by Cop is her first feature-length screenplay and she has recently started work on a new feature script.
Ira Nayman • A Guide for the Easily Confused
Ira Nayman is the author of five books of political and social satire. They can be found on his Web site Les Pages aux Folles which also contains new columns, updated weekly. He has also written 13 screenplays, two of which are on the site, and around 60 television scripts (scattered among eight different original series and a few individual spec scripts), four of which are on the site. In addition, he was a writer/performer for the sketch comedy troupe Dead Air. When he's not being artistic all over the place, Ira has a PhD in Communications from McGill University. His dissertation, Literature at Lightspeed is about prose fiction writers who post their work on the Web and the new medium's relationship to print publishing. His Masters thesis, Tell Me a Story I Can Live is about how interactivity changes the nature of storytelling, focusing on the issues of concern to artists. His Masters degree was conducted entirely online through Paul Levinson's Connected Education, which, at the time, was affiliated with The New School for Social Research. Ira also has a BFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts with a Concentration in Creative Writing (screenwriting and playwrighting) from York University.
A Guide for the Easily Confused (Romantic Comedy) A slacker sees an attractive single mother working in a restaurant. Will they fall in love? Not exactly: he abandoned her when she was pregnant and her son is his. Still their current relationships are falling apart. Will they get together again? The path of true love is never straight.