A mix of Australia’s newest and most experienced scriptwriters have been short-listed for the inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship, to be presented at the 40th annual AWGIE Awards on Friday 31st August.
An initiative of the Australian Writers’ Foundation (AWF), the charitable arm of the Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG), the Fellowship is named in memory of Kit Denton. It has been developed to reward courage and excellence in performance writing by providing writers with the opportunity to develop a project of their choice over the following year.
Kit Denton was a lifetime member of the AWG, scriptwriter, author, poet, lyricist, and father of well known media personality, Andrew Denton. ‘Kit was a writer’s writer, unfailingly professional, a man of commitment and integrity and never afraid to speak the truth as he saw it,’ said Denton. ‘When approached by AWF President, Geoffrey Atherden, about the Fellowship, I suggested the criteria be simple: the writer’s work must demonstrate courage.
‘With an increasing concentration of media ownership coinciding with a rise in fundamentalist thinking, the need for genuine free-thinkers, those unafraid to question and challenge the status-quo is greater than ever.’
This courageous thinking is clearly reflected in this year’s shortlist which includes a thought-provoking play by a Sudanese refugee and ex-prisoner of conscience, a 13-part TV series that evaluates the difference between justice and the law, and a drama series about the lives of young multicultural Australians.
AWF President, Geoffrey Atherden, said, ‘A writer can display courage in many ways: by independence of thought, by expressing a deeply unpopular view, by persevering in the face of limited resources, or by refusing to baulk at seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
‘In presenting the Kit Denton Fellowship, the AWF is demonstrating their commitment to increasing opportunities for satisfying and rewarding work, and hopefully it will be rattling cages for many years to come,’ he said.
The Kit Denton Fellowship is supported by Zapruder’s Other Films, FremantleMedia Australia, Crikey, GNWTV, Kennedy Miller Mitchell and Tress Cox Lawyers. A list of the inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship short listed writers is below.
The 40th annual AWGIE Awards offers sixty of Australia’s best stage and screen writers awards in over 20 categories as well, as number of prestigious industry prizes and fellowships including the Kit Denton Fellowship.
Bookings to attend the 40th AWGIE Awards are now open. To book please visit http://www.awg.com.au/ or call 1300 552 228.
2007 KIT DENTON FELLOWSHIP SHORTLIST
* Afeif Ismail Abdelrazig
Sudanese refugee and ex-prisoner of conscience, Afeif is a poet and playwright. His short-listed work, The Shrouds, Or the Dead, is an allegorical play that tells the story of three fishermen fighting over ownership of a fish and how this small incident develops into a feud with severe consequences.
* Clare Atkins and Sabour Bradley
Ex-Home and Away script editors, Clare and Sabour quit their jobs on Australia’s favourite soapie to develop Represent, a project designed to find young storytellers and give them a voice. Through a series of workshops with Australian youths, the two writers have created the first draft of a drama series, The Space Between, which looks at the everyday stories and struggles of young, multicultural Australians.
* Ian David
Ian is a renowned screenwriter who is looking to draw on his own study of the legal system to create a 13-part TV series about law – what he calls the, ‘bedrock of civilisation’ – and its relationship, if any, to justice.
* Luke Davies
The writer of the award winning book and film, Candy, Luke’s proposed screenplay, Henry Merlo, is a comedy-drama about a drama teacher who has lost his voice, yet finds it again by helping his students find theirs. According to Luke, ‘It’s about finding the courage to narrow the gap between the life one is leading and the life one ought to be leading.’
* Suzie Miller
Playwright Suzie Miller, who also works as a human rights and criminal lawyer, has done a significant amount of research into the effect of male rape in prisons. The result is a disturbing, yet gripping play that looks at the nightmare of rape and how it subsequently affects behaviour.
* Tee O’Neill
Tee is renowned for her real-life experiences working and living with asylum seekers, all over the world. Her proposed project, Best Possible World, draws on Tee’s personal study into the families of Bosnian asylum seekers.
* Stephen Sewell
Acclaimed playwright Stephen Sewell’s short-listed work, Jesus of Abu Ghraib, is set in an Iraqi prison and looks deeply into Australia’s involvement in the Iraqi War, the War on Terror and in the American Alliance.
* Katherine Thomson
Katherine Thomson has been selected for a feature film project she is working on with Paul Thompson. Set in the United States, like much of Katherine’s work, it focuses on issues of social justice.
[release from the AWG]