Best film scripts awarded prizes at Victoria
MA Scriptwriting students Jack Barrowman and Abby Howells are this year's winners.
A Victoria University of Wellington Masters student has won the annual David Carson-Parker Embassy Prize in Scriptwriting for his feature film script The Sun At Night, set amid Wellington's youth and drug culture.
Jack Barrowma, a Masters student in the Creative Writing programme at Victoria's International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML), received his $3,000 prize at a function last night.
The prize is awarded annually to the best script written in the Masters course in Creative Writing at the IIML.
Victoria Scriptwriting Programme Director Ken Duncum describes Jack's script as devastating and compelling. It tells the story of Alex, barely past his teens, who wants to move forward with his life but is trapped in a constant cycle of using, and then recovering from, drugs and alcohol. When Alex discovers that a close friend of his is regularly plying young women with drugs to enable date rape, he struggles with the dilemma of how to stop him while maintaining his own addictive habit.
The prize, funded through the Victoria University Foundation, was first established by the Embassy Theatre Trust, then funded by arts philanthropist the late David Carson-Parker. It is now supported through the generosity of Jeremy Commons.
At the same function fellow MA scriptwriter Abby Howells was awarded the Brad McGann Filmwriting Award for her feature film script Standing Up, a road movie about two rival comedians forced to drive together from Auckland to Dunedin.
The annual Brad McGann Prize of $2,000 was established in memory of Brad McGann, writer and director of iconic New Zealand feature film In My Father's Den.
For more information contact Ken Duncum on 04-463 6882 or ken.duncum@vuw.ac.nz
A media release issued by Victoria University of Wellington Communications & Marketing. Kristina Keogh, Assistant Communications Adviser, can be contacted by emailing kristina.keogh@vuw.ac.nz or phoning +64-4-463 5163 or +64-27-563 5163.