FILM INDEPENDENT SELECTS 11 FELLOWS FOR 2012 SCREENWRITING LAB

Film Independent Expands Screenwriting Lab with $10,000
Loyola Marymount University SFTV Screenwriting Fellowship

LOS ANGELES (September 6, 2012) — Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and Los Angeles Film Festival, is pleased to announce the screenwriters selected for its 13th annual Screenwriting Lab, sponsored by the Writers Guild of America, West. The Screenwriting Lab is an intensive six-week program designed to help writers improve their craft, and take their current scripts to the next level in a nurturing yet challenging creative environment. Under the tutelage of the Lab Mentors, the Fellows are advised on the craft and business of screenwriting, and are also introduced to established screenwriters, producers and film professionals who serve as guest speakers and one-on-one Advisors. Writer/Director Robin Swicord (The Jane Austen Book Club, Memoirs of a Geisha) and Writer Jeff Stockwell (Bridge to Terabithia, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) are this year’s Mentors. Guest Speakers include, Ava DuVernay (Middle of Nowhere), Jill Soloway (Afternoon Delight), and Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij (The East, The Sound of My Voice).

The Loyola Marymount University SFTV Screenwriting Fellowship newly created this year, awards one participant of Film Independent’s Screenwriting Lab a $10,000 grant. The award includes admission to Film Independent’s Screenwriting Lab and year-round support from Film Independent. The recipient of this year’s fellowship is Jenniffer Castillo, for her script Undocumented.

“This year we are thrilled to have received support of the Screenwriting Lab from Loyola Marymount University and are so excited to be awarding the LMU SFTV Screenwriting Fellowship to Jenniffer Castillo for her courageous and compelling screenplay, Undocumented,” said Director of Artist Development, Jennifer Kushner. “We are looking forward to mentoring all the new Screenwriting Fellows. They are an exceptional group of filmmakers with unique and diverse stories.”

“We are delighted to continue developing our relationship with Film Independent as we partner with them on their annual Lab and Screenwriting Fellowship this year.  Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television shares with Film Independent the commitment to foster and mentor the next generation of filmmakers,” said Stephen Ujlaki, Dean of Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television. “The Fellowship was highly competitive and Film Independent’s selection of Jenniffer Castillo, an exceptional young professional on the move, was a sound choice.”

The Screenwriting Lab is provided free to invited screenwriters, who upon acceptance become Film Independent Fellows, receiving year-round support, including access to Film Independent’s annual film education offerings and the Los Angeles Film Festival. In addition, Lab Fellows are eligible to join the Independent Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America, West. Recent projects developed through the Lab include Robbie Pickering’s Natural Selection, which garnered multiple awards at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival, Beth Schacter’s Normal Adolescent Behavior, Scott Prendergast’s Kabluey, Philip Flores’ and Max Doty’s The Wheeler Boys, Suzi Yoonessi’s Dear Lemon Lima, Erin Cassidy and Bruce Pavalon’s We Are the Mods, and Minh Nguyen-Vo’s Buffalo Boy, which was Vietnam’s entry to the 2006 Academy Awards.

The Screenwriting Lab is one of Film Independent’s Artist Development Programs, which include a Producing Lab running each fall, a Directing Lab running in the winter, and a Documentary Lab in the spring. For more information on any of the Labs or the projects that have been developed in them, please contact Jennifer Kushner, Director of Artist Development, at 310.432.1275.  Additional information and an application form can be found at www.filmindependent.org.

The 2012 Screenwriters Lab participants and their projects are:

1. Asphalt Symphony – A washed up basketball phenom-turned-recruiter catapults an undiscovered young prodigy from the streets of Detroit into the high stakes world of amateur basketball but then must fight to protect him from following in his tragic footsteps.

Mahesh Pailoor is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose short films and commercials have won awards at festivals around the world. A graduate of NYU and AFI, he is a recipient of the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award, was a 2008 Project:Involve Fellow, and was most recently an ABC/DGA Directing Fellow. Mahesh is currently in post-production on his feature film, Brahmin Bulls, starring Sendhil Ramamurthy, Roshan Seth, Mary Steenburgen, and Justin Bartha.

Chris Zafirson is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. Having spent his career as a business leader at a Fortune 500 company Zafirson decided it was time to pursue his life long passion of screenwriting. In 2008, he completed his first full-length screenplay L.A. Mourning and has been writing ever since. In 2009, Zafirson partnered with Mahesh Pailoor to write Asphalt Symphony, which became a second round selection for the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting competition. In 2012, Zafirson graduated from UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting and is currently working to develop the projects he created at UCLA.

2. Bardos – Two men alternate the ten-year aftermath of a tragic car accident, until one of them breaks the cycle and changes everything.

Anslem Richardson is an actor, writer, artist and filmmaker. He is the recipient of The Independent Feature Project’s (now Independent Film Week) Gordon Parks Award for Screenwriting for his screenplay The Subway Story. His following screenplay, Bardos, earned him the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award in Screenwriting. As an actor, he recently starred in the film Black Rock, directed by Katie Aselton (starring Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell), which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. His previous film, The Locksmith, directed by Brad and Todd Barnes, received the Best of NEXT Award at the Sundance Film Festival; the Maverick Award for Low Budget Feature Film at the Method Fest Film Festival; and Special Jury Prize for Filmmaking at Florida Film Festival. For his portrayal of Mike, Richardson was awarded the Maverick Award for Acting at the Method Fest Film Festival. Currently Richardson is a recurring guest star on NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS, playing the role of Tahir Khaled. Other credits include: Five Deep Breaths, directed by Seith Mann, which screened at Cannes, Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals (winner: Best-Narrative Short at Chicago International, and Best-Narrative Short at Los Angeles Film Festival); Detroit 1-8-7, Life On Mars, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and As The World Turns. His Off-Broadway credits include The Exonerated, directed by Bob Balaban.  With partner Marin Gazzaniga, he formed the production company ThisThing Films. Their first short film production “Like So Many Things…Unsaid” became a finalist for the IFC/Redbull Media Labs Competition. It led to the web-series Like So Many Things… which aired on The Independent Film Channel.

3. Commerce – A spiraling compulsion threatens to alienate a successful Los Angeles businessman from his family and leads to a chance meeting with a young gambler who could save or destroy him in the City of Commerce.

Lisa Robertson was one of eight women awarded an American Film Institute Directing Workshop for Women fellowship and completed her short film “Commerce” starring Joel Gretsch, Annabeth Gish and Noel Fisher as part of that unique program. “Commerce” was awarded a 2011 Adrienne Shelly Foundation Grant in support of taking the film to full-length feature and has played at festivals throughout the U.S. Awards include: Best Student Film (Vail Film Festival), First Prize, Best Actress (Rhode Island International), Audience Award (Breckenridge Festival of Film), Best Short Film (Catalina Film Festival). After an early career in dance in her native Australia, a meeting with filmmaker Jane Campion led Robertson to train as an actor in London and San Francisco, and with acclaimed coach Larry Moss in Los Angeles. Robertson directed in studio, garnering Moss’s support and launching her career as a coach/director. For the past eight years she has coached lead and supporting roles both privately and on-set. Credits include: Eddie Izzard’s series lead in The Riches (FX), also Ocean’s 13, Valkyrie, Rage (dir. Sally Potter); the Russell Crowe feature, Tenderness; Brotherhood (Annabeth Gish); Munich; The Stoning Of Soraya M (title role), Rendition, Post Grad (Alexis Bledel); Traitor; Mad Men. She has coached regular and guest star roles on nearly every TV episodic. Robertson was also Writers Assistant 2001/2002 to Creator/Executive Producer Michael Frost Beckner for his TV series The Agency (CBS) as well as assisting on his film projects. In theater, Robertson was awarded a 2004 New Directors Observership by the NY Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, which she completed at the Ahmanson Theater, Los Angeles.  Robertson produced and directed American Ten at the Coast Playhouse, West Hollywood, which garnered industry acclaim and saw standing room only houses. As Producer/Associate Director, Robertson mounted a critically acclaimed production of King Lear. In 2010, Robertson wrote and directed “The Letter,” starring Annabeth Gish and Kyle Secor as a submission short for AFI Directing Workshop for Women application, which explored an early episode of the same family’s story she continues in “Commerce.” Robertson has written short stories for many years under the tutelage of Jim Krusoe at Santa Monica College and, at UCLA, completed upper division comparative literature and Classics with particular emphasis on the Classical Epic and Classical Mythology.

4. Folsom Street – Set in the gritty, pre-dot-com Mission District of San Francisco, a lesbian couple’s world implodes as one of them transitions to male, and they test the limits of unconditional love and self-identity while trying to be a straight couple.

Krisy Gosney was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Orange County and San Francisco.  Her script Folsom Street won a San Francisco Film Society-Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for screenwriting and participated in the 2010 IFP IFW Emerging Narrative program. Folsom Street (formally Manhandled) was also a semi-finalist for a 2010 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Gosney has made several award-winning short films including Gator Armstrong Plays With Dolls and Wanted. And she has written short scripts for award-winning directors including Peeling and Between You and Me. Her stage plays include Take It Like a Man and Are These Your Panties which was a San Francisco Bay Area Critic’s Pick. Gosney earned a MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. Her awards include a James A. Michener Fellowship, Carl David Memorial Fellowship and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Fellowship. Currently, Gosney is developing her script Folsom Street. And she is an executive producer and investigator with the ghost hunting and history web series Dead History Project (www.deadhistoryproject.com).

5. Foreign Relations – A South Korean girl living with an American host family accidentally learns all the secrets they’re keeping from each other, turning their lives upside down.

Jon Goldman is a filmmaker and translator. His short film “Diplomacy,” a wry take on the power of interpreters in closed-door negotiations between the United States and Iran, played over two dozen film festivals worldwide, including Abu Dhabi, South by Southwest and Tokyo. The film won jury and audience awards in Paris, Aspen, New York City, Switzerland and Mexico. Goldman is a former Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Nicholl Fellowship Finalist, Netflix/Film Independent Find Your Voice Film Competition Finalist and Film Independent Directing Lab Fellow. Fluent in French, Goldman has worked on films in Europe and Hollywood, and continues to indulge a passion for global, cross-cultural stories.

6. Icelandic Woman on the Verge – Verging on homelessness following the economic collapse of 2008, Icelander Lara Hafdisardottir will go to extreme lengths to prove to her children that she is worthy of their trust — even if it means engaging in immoral and deceitful conduct.

Isold Uggadottir is an Icelandic filmmaker based in New York City. Her directorial debut, “Family Reunion,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and subsequently traveled to over 100 film festivals, collecting multiple festival awards, as well as an Icelandic Academy Award nomination for Best Short Film.  Following this, Uggadottir continued to enjoy success with her short films “Committed” and “Clean,” which both were honored with the Icelandic Academy Award for Best Short Film (2010 and 2011). The films traveled to multiple festivals around the world, including the BFI London Film Fest, Aspen, Palm Springs, Hamptons and beyond.  Uggadottir’s fourth short film, “Revolution Reykjavik” received the honor of premiering at the distinguished festival New Directors/New Films 2012 (ND/NF) presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the MoMa. Most recently it was nominated for Best Short Film and Best lead Actress at the Icelandic Academy Awards 2012. It was also honored with the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Award for Best Female Director at Columbia University, from where Uggadottir earned her M.F.A. in directing and screenwriting in 2011. Her studies were supported with scholarships from New York Women in Film and Television, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Her work has also been funded by NYSCA, the Icelandic Film Centre and Frameline. Uggadottir is an alumna of the Berlinale Talent Campus ‘08 and IFP/Emerging Narrative. Screen International named her “one of the rising stars of Icelandic film.”

7. I’m Not Down – A proud, aging punk rocker has to fight for his way of life when a yuppie couple wants to turn the New York City tenement building where he’s lived under rent-control for thirty years into their own private McMansion in this true New York story about class, dreams, temptation and loyalty.

Josh Robbins did his undergraduate work in film production at Hunter College of the City University of New York and received his M.F.A. in screenwriting from The University of Southern California, where he was awarded departmental honors and where he received the Jack Nicholson Award for best feature screenplay. He has worked in development as a script reader for HDnet Films, in production as a script supervisor, and in postproduction as an assistant editor. He has written seven feature film scripts and two television spec scripts. His most recent screenplay, I’m Not Down, won first place in the Landlocked Film Festival and Woods Hole Film Festival feature script competitions. Robbins currently teaches screenwriting and cinema studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

8. The World of Men – Auggie’s attempts to find a wife and take over the family business are foiled when his cancer-stricken kid sister Steph moves in to his apartment uninvited.

Katherine Nolfi is a New York-based writer and director. Her debut feature film, Upstate (co-directed with Andrew Luis), premiered in competition at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival. The LA Weekly selected the film as one of the “Best of the Fest.” Upstate is distributed by IFC Films and SundanceNOW. Nolfi has written and directed several short films, including “Unlimited” (co-directed with Andrew Luis), which was an official selection of SXSW 2009. Other work includes “Mouth Babies” (co-directed with Lisa Duva) an official selection of the 2011 Slamdance Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival and the Seattle True Independent Film Festival where it won “Best Short.” The World of Men, a screenplay based on her experiences growing up in the Rust Belt and being diagnosed with late-stage cancer as a young adult, was one of three finalists for the 2012 Nantucket Film Festival’s Tony Cox Screenwriting Competition.  Nolfi is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts film program.

9. Undocumented – Separated by a federal immigration raid, a mother does everything in her power to get back to her daughter before the little girl dies.

Jenniffer Castillo writes and produces narrative, documentary and new media content that targets the Latino community and focuses on issues of social justice. Currently, she writes and executive produces Imagen-Award-nominated web series, Inspira, which features Latino leaders across America. Additionally, Castillo is currently in production with feature documentary “American DREAMers” which follows the journey of a group of undocumented students who are walking across the country from San Francisco to Washington D.C. in support of the DREAM Act. Previously, Castillo obtained an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University and a B.A. in English and Film Studies from Boston College. Undocumented, which began as a short and later became Castillo’s LMU thesis, was selected as a Second Rounder in the 2011 Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.  While at LMU, Castillo served as a Script Reader for Parkes MacDonald Productions and interned at the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She also assisted writer/director, Ondi Timoner, through the development of <3 Startups, a documentary later packaged as a docudrama about Internet startups and the eclectic personalities that bring them together.  Beyond the Latino community, Castillo also strives to give a voice to other groups she identifies with including women and the LGBT community. Castillo was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and left the island when she graduated from high school to attend Boston College. She now resides in West Hollywood and hopes to relocate to the Southbay in the near future.

10. Unmanned – A young Air Force drone operator struggles to balance the stresses of going to war for the first time with the challenges of being a good father and husband, as he commutes each day between suburban family life and the war he fights by remote control.

Casey Cooper Johnson completed his M.F.A. at the American Film Institute, and prior to that lived for 10 years in post-war Kosovo, directing documentaries and producing an internationally syndicated current affairs program Life in Kosovo. He is best known in the Balkan region for his weekly political satire sketches, Kosovo’s Son-in-Law. At AFI, Johnson wrote and directed the short version of “Unmanned,” which screened at AFI Fest and Tribeca Film Festival. He currently produces non-fiction content for WIGS, a new digital channel created by Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia, while preparing to direct the feature-length version of Unmanned.

About Film Independent

Film Independent is a non-profit arts organization that champions independent film and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation, and uniqueness of vision. Film Independent helps filmmakers make their movies, builds an audience for their projects, and works to diversify the film industry. Film Independent’s Board of Directors, filmmakers, staff, and constituents, is comprised of an inclusive community of individuals across ability, age, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual orientation. Anyone passionate about film can become a member, whether you are a filmmaker, industry professional, or a film lover.

Film Independent produces the Spirit Awards, the annual celebration honoring artist-driven films and recognizing the finest achievements of American independent filmmakers.  Film Independent also produces the Los Angeles Film Festival, showcasing the best of American and international cinema and the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, a year-round, weekly program that offers unique cinematic experiences for the Los Angeles creative community and the general public.

With over 250 annual screenings and events, Film Independent provides access to a network of like-minded artists who are driving creativity in the film industry. Film Independent’s Artist Development program offers free Labs for selected writers, directors, producers and documentary filmmakers and presents year-round networking opportunities. Project Involve is Film Independent’s signature program dedicated to fostering the careers of talented filmmakers from communities traditionally underrepresented in the film industry. For more information or to become a member, visit FilmIndependent.org.

For More Information, Contact:

Ginsberg / Libby
Chris Libby
chris.libby@ginsberglibby.com or 323-645-6800

Ginsberg / Libby
Lee Ginsberg
lee.ginsberg@ginsberglibby.com or 323-645-6800

Ginsberg / Libby
Gina Lang
gina.lang@ginsberglibby.com or 323-645-6800

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