Welcome to GCP's page dedicated to the
New Hampshire Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
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As a former Director of the New Hampshire Film Festival Screenplay Competition, Dana Biscotti Myskowski invited Star Island Corporation to join the Festival. The result? The Grand Prize Winning Writer is awarded an all-inclusive Writer's Retreat on fabulous Star Island, NH; and Star Island employees enjoy the NHFF festivities.
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NHFF News Archives: |
The 2013 NHFF Screenplay Competition Committee is Pleased to Announce This Year’s Top Three Scripts
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Portsmouth, NH--The 2013 committee has read a record number of screenplays and narrowed the candidates in the latest round from ten to three. The trio of scripts are being read and evaluated by Guest Grand Prize Judge Susan Kim, playwright, TV writer, and author, who has written and produced documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, HBO, and AMC. The Top Three Screenplays are:
THE KIDS FROM NOWHERE (drama) Written by George Guthridge and Deborah Schildt Based on the true story of Eskimo high school students from a Bering Sea island-whaling village who, inspired by an outsider who becomes their teacher, learn to use their unique cultural cognition as they overcome staggering educational and emotional obstacles to become national champions in one of America's most difficult academic competitions. THE LOVE HUNTERS (romance/horror) Written by Ivan Bukta The Love Hunters features beautiful supernatural beings who feed on human emotions to survive, told from the perspective of an outcast among them yearning to feel the one thing forbidden to him—love. MAX’S FANTASTIC ADVENTURES—THE WELL OF LOST SOULS (family adventure) Written by Jonathan Bucari While on the hunt for buried treasure, Max and The Young Adventures Club (his band of adventure-seeking best friends) discover an ancient evil deep beneath their idyllic suburban town. When his younger brother Jamie goes missing, Max and his friends must join together to face the forces of darkness, or risk losing their friends and loved ones forever. Please join us for this year’s New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF), October 17-20. We will introduce the Grand Prize Winning Scribe during a reading with co-authors Susan Kim and Laurence Klaven of their latest book, Wasteland, a YA novel published by HarperTeen. Meet the authors Friday night, October 18, 5:30-7:00 p.m. at RiverRun Bookstore at 142 Fleet Street in downtown Portsmouth. The free event is co-hosted by RiverRun Bookstore, NHFF, and Granite SoFFA—the New Hampshire Society of Female Film Artists. ### |
NHFF Screenplay Competition Announces 2013 Grand Prize Package and Industry Judge
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New Hampshire Film Festival 2013 Screenplay Competition Returns with Stellar Grand Prize Package: A Two-Week Writer’s Residency at the Fabulous Star Island Retreat Center, to be enjoyed in the Summer of 2014!
Grand Prize Judge—Playwright, TV Writer, and Author Susan Kim—to Select this Year’s Winning Scribe Once again the New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF) Screenplay Competition, in conjunction with Star Island Corporation, is pleased to offer the Grand Prize Winning Writer a fabulous two week-long Writer’s Residency during the Summer of 2014 at Star Island Family Retreat and Conference Center on Star Island, located ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire. Choosing the Top Scribe this year is Susan Kim, playwright, TV writer, and author, who has written and produced documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, HBO, and AMC. Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, which she wrote and co-produced, was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival and won special jury and audience awards at the Hamptons and Fort Lauderdale international film festivals. She also won the Writers Guild of America award for the PBS documentary about feminism in the 1950s, Paving the Way. Susan has written for more than three dozen children’s TV series, including Wonder Pets!, Arthur, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Speed Racer, and has been nominated for the Emmy four times and the Writers Guild award five times. She won a Writers Guild award in 1993 for PBS’ Square One TV. She wrote two graphic novels with Laurence Klavan, City of Spies and Brain Camp, which have received numerous awards from the American Library Association, Junior Library Guild, Scripps Howard News Service, and others. With Klavan, she is currently writing a 3-part young adult series called Wasteland for HarperTeen, a subsidiary of HarperCollins. Plays include the stage adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and numerous one-acts; her work has been produced around the country and internationally. She lives in New York City and teaches dramatic writing at NYU and in the MFA program at Goddard College. In promotion of this year’s competition NHFF has launched a separate twitter account @NHFFscripts to keep submitters and followers connected. ### |
Enjoy these Loglines to Train Stories from May's @NHFFScripts Setting Challenge |
Runaway Mind Train
A mysterious train journey with an unknown destination, containing a series of epic monologues which ultimately explain the motives of everyone on board. Will they reach their destination? Submitted by Owen Lloyd Untitled A group of outlaws jumps on a moving train at night to rob it. Just one problem, it's a ghost train that disappeared fifty years earlier. Submitted by Duncan Putney May's @NHFFScripts Setting Challenge: What story would you set on a train? Inspired by @BostonDotCom's tweet announcing that Amtrak will soon launch 70 new locomotives, I was immediately transported to unique one-setting script stories. While films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Darjeeling Unlimited, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, The Station Agent and more featured trains within the stories, it's the challenge of the Agatha Christie one-setting story Murder on the Orient Express that most impresses me. As a storyteller, it's a compelling setting to focus on for the duration of a two-hour tale. As a producer, it's the low-budget potential of a single setting story with a limited cast. Of course, the train setting is not necessarily low budget; just read Sydney Lumet's chapter in his book Making Movies where he describes his experience and challenges directing the luminescent screen adaptation of Christie's work. So while a train setting may not be cheap to film, it still presents the writer with the challenge of creating a contained story within a single setting. And yet it also offers the flexibility of characters exiting and entering at stops, and of presenting more than one car--from the dining car to the sleeper compartment. So what story would you set on a train? Send us your title and one or two-sentence logline, and we will feature the best submissions, plus a link to your twitter account and website, on this site next month. ### |
NHFF Screenplay Competition committee is pleased to present the
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Best of luck to all the scribes who entered this year’s competition! ### |
NHFF Screenplay Competition Congratulates the 2013
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BLOOD’S CHILD Steven Bogart
BULLY FOR ME Missy Cohen-Fyffe BUT, THEN Lauren McGrail GHOST TRAPS Robert Abel GRACE Lynda Lemberg & Jeffrey Allen Russel THE KIDS FROM NOWHERE George Guthridge & Deborah Schildt HUMAN TERRAIN Chris Willis THE HUNGER Bryan Ott IMMOLATION Drew Byerly & Willy J. Sasso IT GIRL Carlton Witherell LEGENDS FIRST Andrea Kingsbury LIFE MORE PERFECT Steve Brechtel THE LOVE HUNTERS Ivan Bukta MACHINA Tom Radovich MASS EXODUS Shaun Delliskave MAX’S FANTASTIC ADVENTURES—THE WELL OF LOST SOULS Jonathan Bucari THE MONEY MAN Harry Hunsicker NIGHT VISITS Dennis Collins Johnson & Eugene McDaniels OHIO FINCH Chad Parsons & Wolfgang Bauer PRIVATE SCREENING Nathan Hurlbut RACING WITH THE CLOUDS Pauline Hawkins SAGE GREEN Franklin Black SHE WAS LEFT ALONE Bela Wolf TEXAS RED Harry Hunsicker TIME AND SPACE Steven Prowse ZAKIS Andre Gaumond |
A Reading & Reception with Author Joyce Maynard |
Plus an Opportunity to Meet the 2012 NHFF Screenplay Competition Grand Prize Winning Scribe
Please join us at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth to meet Author Joyce Maynard as she reads from, talks briefly about, and answers questions regarding the recent filming of her novel Labor Day, which was adapted to the screen and filmed this summer in New England under the direction of Jason Reitman (who also directed and wrote Up in the Air starring George Clooney; Thank You for Smoking with Aaron Eckhart, and more). The reading is scheduled during the New Hampshire Film Festival, between events on Friday, October 12, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., at RiverRun Bookstore’s Fleet Street location. Maynard will read a favorite short passage from her novel. “It will be an extremely sexy scene between Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin,” Maynard said of the co-stars who will appear in the film version of Labor Day, which is expected to be released next summer. The event will mark the third year that Granite SoFFA (the New Hampshire Society of Female Film Artists) hosts a cocktail hour at NHFF. During this year’s event the three organizing members of Granite SoFFA—Karlina Lyons, Sue Tinkham, and Dana Biscotti Myskowski—will offer attendees wine and light appetizers. The NHFF Screenplay Competition Committee will also introduce this year’s Grand Prize Winning Scribe: Steve Lucas, author of the screenplay La Mujer (“The Woman”), which was selected as the best of the top four finalists by Maynard, who served as this year’s Grand Prize Judge. Lucas, who leads a non-profit organization based in Texas that does extensive work in Central America, wrote a tale about a distraught reporter investigating a high-profile murder in Ecuador. While there, the reporter encounters an even greater mystery in rumors of a mysterious and beautiful woman being relentlessly pursued by drug lords. RiverRun Bookstore, which regularly hosts readings and events, is located at 142 Fleet Street in Portsmouth, and on the web at www.RiverRunBookstore.com. Though no RSVP is necessary, Granite SoFFA invites Facebook aficionados to indicate their interest in attending through the newly created Facebook Event Page for this Oct. 12th, 5:30 to 7 p.m. reading and reception. ### |
NHFF Screenplay Competition is pleased to announce the 2012 Top Four Finalists |
Author Joyce Maynard, the 2012 NHFF Screenplay Competition Grand Prize Judge, is currently reading & evaluating the top four screenplays, and will choose the Grand Prize Winner from among this year’s Finalists. The Grand Prize Winner will receive accommodations and two festival passes to attend this year's NHFF, a Granny, and a week-long writer's retreat for two at the Star Island Family Retreat and Conference Center, to be enjoyed next season (2013).
GIFTED (sci-fi thriller) Written by Dennis Neil Kleinman & Tom McCarron Super-intelligent teen misfits confront ignorance, suspicion, and violence as they race to find a cure for a lethal pathogen that destroys sanity. Dennis Neil Kleinman is a writer/producer whose work has appeared on The History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic. He also co-wrote the theme song for Reading Rainbow. Tom McCarron is a business consultant/strategist specializing in technology start-ups. He was formerly head of a Denver-based biotechnology company. Both writers live in the NH Seacoast area. Gifted is their first collaboration. 35 SOUTH (drama) Written by John Morton A traveling businessman and his young female cohort try to outwit a thuggish blackmailer as they race south on Interstate 35. Will they make it home with their lives, careers, and dignity intact, or will they succumb to the violence and corruption that threaten them from all sides? John Morton has written speeches, magazine columns, Op Eds, congressional testimony, letters, video scripts, jokes, wedding toasts and whatever else needed to be written for the CEOs of some of the world’s most prominent companies. He is President and Editor in Chief of Better Writing for Business Leaders (BWBL) (www.bwbl.biz). John and his family are proud residents of Austin, Texas. 35 SOUTH is his first screenplay. THE HENCHMAN (comedy) Written by Ellery & Terry Sachs When an ordinary henchman accidentally becomes the city’s newest villain, he discovers the crime syndicate that he works for is not what it seems. Through his rise to power he realizes that he is the only one with the ability to save the city. Ellery & Terry Sachs, BOYS, born and raised in Salt Lake City, heard Boston by Augustana and decided that, yes, they would rather see a sunrise than a sunset. They packed their bags and headed east. Ellery now lives in Boston with his beautiful wife and newborn daughter. Terry lives alone, still. Their love of movies spurred on their interest to write screenplays. They have yet to see a sunrise; it just happens too early everyday. LA MUJER (thriller) Written by Steve Lucas A distraught reporter investigating a high-profile murder in Ecuador encounters an even greater mystery in rumors of a mysterious and beautiful woman being pursued by drug lords. Steve Lucas leads a non-profit organization based in Texas, which does extensive work in Central America. He is a father of four, and a grandfather of three. His journey as a screenwriter began from a love of movies and a desire to say something through his writing. ### |
New Hampshire Film Festival Announces Semifinalists & Quarterfinalists of the 2012 Screenwriting Competition |
In an especially competitive year of the New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF) Screenwriting Competition, Green Chair Picture's Dana Biscotti Myskowski, director of the screenplay competition, is pleased to introduce a new Quarterfinalist Round.
Noted author Joyce Maynard will judge this year’s Finalist Round, selecting the Grand Prize Winner. The winning scribe will receive a fabulous writer’s residency to the ocean-side Star Island Family Retreat and Conference Center, a prize package worth an estimated $3500. In addition, the writer and a companion will be our guests at this fall’s New Hampshire Film Festival, and an excerpt of the winning script will be featured in the next edition of Green Chair Reader (with the author’s approval). Congratulations to the following scribes: Semi-Finalists/Top Ten
The Henchmen by Ellery & Terry Sachs Steen’s Folly by Jeffrey Gold Nekropolis by Kevin Walker & Jason Beever Beneath the Surface by Deirdre Brenner La Mujer by Steve Lucas Elsinore High by Allen Gorney Gifted by Tom McCarron & Dennis Neil Klienman Cake by Patrick Tobin 35 South by John Morton Ripple by Heather Faris Quarter-Finalists/Top 25 Conquest of the Soda Men by Nicholas Cammilleri The Henchmen by Ellery & Terry Sachs The Pitch by Stan Freeman Steen’s Folly by Jeffrey Gold The Price of Progress by Stephen Readey Nekropolis by Kevin Walker & Jason Beever $10,000 for the Remains of Liz Maggerd by Samuel Laskey Beneath the Surface by Deirdre Brenner Guero by Gregory Mantell La Mujer by Steve Lucas The Helping Stone by Robert Toiz Elsinore High by Allen Gorney Halfway Home by David Schroeder Gifted by Tom McCarron & Dennis Neil Klienman My Husband’s Corpse by Sehal Sethi The High Mesa Colony by Thomas Pace Cake by Patrick Tobin The Baldoyle Bullets by Michael Kelly 35 South by John Morton Hungry Like the Wolf by Deirdre Brenner Identical Opposites by Kevin Howard Ripple by Heather Faris Scarlett Sunshine by Faith Brody Patane Baker’s Care by Jeana Grady 14 Forever by Homa Mojtabai |
