The annual Ozark Foothills FilmFest Screenwriting Competition Awards Program took place on the campus of Lyon College on Thursday evening, March 25. Thirty-three entries were received from the United States and Canada.
The Writ Writer, written by Mike Murphy of Conway, won First Place and the $500 award. The screenplay begins in 1919 rural Arkansas and tells the true story of a local black attorney, Scipio Africanus Jones, who saves 12 black sharecroppers from death row. His six year struggle changes US law and the lives of those around him, including his own. Murphy’s first screenplay, The Knuckleballer, won Second Place in the 2008 competition.
Second Place and the $300 prize went to God I Wish You Were Here, by Kevin Silva of San Rafael, California. The screenplay follows a reclusive woman’s relationship with a troubled writer who is forced to leave her pastoral hideaway.
The Devil and Harry Houdini, by Colleen DeMaio of Van Nuys, California won Third Place and the $200 prize. Houdini must outwit the Devil to perform the ultimate escape—from Hell itself.
For the first time, the festival recognized an Honorable mention selection, Reality Check, by Peter Clines, also of Van Nuys. Clines entered a space fantasy involving a starship crew that discovers it is trapped in a 50’s movie serial.
Judges for the competition were Ben Fry of Little Rock, KUAR station manager and screenwriting instructor at UALR; and Pola Zen of Tel Aviv, Israel, a director and screenplay editor. Zen attended the 2009 Ozark Foothills FilmFest to present her short film, Dolls and Houses. The screenwriting competition is sponsored by Category One Entertainment and Jesse Glenn Tignor, a Batesville writer.
