Award-Winning Screenplays Showcased by TFT

UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television has announced this year?s winners in the annual Screenwriters Showcase, an industry-juried screenplay competition celebrating the creative work of students in the school?s graduate screenwriting program.

Screenwriters Showcase was created to provide an opportunity for theater, film and television student scribes to present samples of their work to the entertainment industry. Selections from the five winning works, chosen from among 49 candidates by a distinguished panel of Hollywood professionals, will receive staged readings at the Screenwriters Showcase event at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June 12, at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 S. Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills. The evening will be hosted by theater, film and television alumnus and accomplished screenwriter Mike Werb (?Face/Off?). For information and to R.S.V.P., visit http://www.tft.ucla.edu/festival2006. Admission is free, but reservations are required as space is limited.

Screenwriters Showcase winners and their scripts:

Eyal Alony holds a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has received the Zaki Gordon Award, the Harmony Gold Award and the Milton Sperling Fellowship. His horror script ?Return? concerns a single mother coming home to the community she abandoned, where she becomes locked in a struggle with a kabbalistic spirit that has taken control of her teenage daughter.

Andrew Cypiot has supplemented his B.A. from Williams College with an M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in art appraisal from Sotheby?s Art Auction House, and is now enrolled in the M.F.A. Screenwriting Program at UCLA. Cypiot?s ?Flying Start? is an historical drama based on the true story of Marshall ?Major? Taylor, the first African American world champion in professional sports. Taylor was the world sprint cycling champion in 1899, at a time when velodrome cycling was the most popular spectator sport in the United States and Europe.

Phil Guidry has a B.A. from the University of Southern California and is working toward his M.F.A. at UCLA. He also has been certified as a safari guide by the Field Guides Association of Southern Africa, a skill that comes in handy in Los Angeles. In Guidry?s screenplay for an animated feature, ?Home Sweet Swamp,? a young alligator trying to return home to the Florida Everglades must survive an evil poacher and a landscape rapidly being developed.

Brian Larsen is the author of numerous screenplays, many short stories and one novel. His work has been recognized with a Nicholson Award in 2005 and a Writer?s Arc Fellowship in 2006. His action-adventure script ?Saga? centers upon Viking warrior Magnus Magnusson, who must lead an insurrection against the nation he helped create in order to save the land and the woman he loves.

Dan Mazeau graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with high honors in physics, then threw it all away to write movies in which things explode. His parents are confused. Deep-sea treasure hunters in Mazeau?s ?Sirens? discover an uncharted island surrounded by sunken ships and unimaginable riches. The catch is that it?s home to the ancient Greek demons the Sirens, monstrous seductresses who lure men to their doom.

Screenwriters Showcase Honorable Mentions

The following writers received Screenwriters Showcase honorable mentions: Yule Caise, “Snail Trails”; Fred Hess, “Muchos Problemos”; Lori Palm, “Little Green”; Lawrence C. Ross Jr., “Men of their Times”; and David Whelan, “Priceless.”

Keywords

"mike werb" 

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