Papers and Presenters
Welcome to the 2023 Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) Conference, coming to you this week on the beautiful campus of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, USA!
Stephens College and the SRN invite you to join us for an impressive lineup of presenters, topics, and events. Space is limited, be sure to register to attend the conference HERE.
SRN2023
PANEL SCHEDULE
&
ABSTRACTS
Wednesday, September 20
6-8 pm
Welcome Tapas Bar/Registration
Stephens Library Penthouse
Thursday, September 21
8-9 am
Continental Breakfast/Registration
Dudley Hall
9-10:45 am
Opening Day Welcome
Keynote #1 - Meg LeFauve & Lorien McKenna
Windsor Auditorium/Dudley Hall
10:45-11:15 am
Break
Thursday 11:15 am-12:45 pm
Panel 1 - A
Working With Female Directors
Moderator: Ann Breidenbach
Quietly Undervalued: Women in the Films of Screenwriter/Director Kelly Reichardt
Shannon Dobson Fopeano
This presentation examines a recurring theme in screenwriter/director Kelly Reichardt’s work; capable women being foolishly discounted by men in both their personal and professional lives. Kelly Reichardt’s feature film debut, BLADES OF GRASS, was released in 1994. It was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and four Independent Spirit Awards. She’s gone on to co-write and direct eight additional films, all of them low-budget and independently produced. Reichardt’s best-known and most awarded film is 2019’s LAST COW. Four of Reichardt’s films star the actress Michelle Williams who plays a variety of women, all of whom are far more competent than the men around her, but who have spent a lifetime being told otherwise. Even so, this recurring character never gives into despair, but instead continues to give all she’s got to the universe. This is just one recurring theme in Reichardt’s films, and it is gently interwoven with other themes she returns to including... the sometimes jagged relationship between human life and its natural environs, and the ways in which we modern Americans can confuse entrapment with inertia. This presentation will include clips from Reichardt’s films, as well as (hopefully) a videotaped personal interview with Reichardt, who herself happens to be a longtime screenwriting and film production professor (at my son’s school, Bard College, in Annandale, NY.)
Shannon Dobson is an independent filmmaker, a TV writer, and a screenwriting instructor. She is a member of the WGA, a graduate of Northwestern University, the Disney/ABC Writing Program, and the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting. TV writing credits include ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE (Hallmark), writing staff positions on shows for Disney and Freeform, as well as hundreds of episodes of reality TV, including fan-faves HOUSE HUNTERS and HOUSE HUNTERS INTERNATIONAL. Shannon just completed post- production on her directorial debut, I LIVE ON YOUR VISITS, a short film which she adapted with permission from the story by Dorothy Parker.
Shannon Dobson Fopeano
Independent scholar
The Shooting Treatment: Skipping the Screenplay in the Lean Development & Production of Lynn Shelton’s Humpday (2009)
Andrew Gay
The late Lynn Shelton was best known for writing and directing character-driven “mumblecore” films that make frequent use of improvised performances, but little has been published about her screenwriting practice. In her filmmaking, Shelton has made use of both conventional screenplays and a hybrid blend of shooting script and treatment known as a scriptment (Murphy 2019), which has become popular in recent years with several indie filmmakers connected to Mark Duplass, including Sean Baker and Charlie McDowell. When writing 2009’s Humpday, however, Shelton developed what she labeled a shooting treatment, a 12-page document that bears none of the scriptment’s resemblances to a screenplay but includes numerous shooting instructions uncommon among traditional treatments.
The unpublished treatment for Humpday (with material dated to both June 14 and June 20, 2008, two days before the commencement of principal photography on June 22) begins with a page of character background, includes a list of 23 scenes (including cut and combined scenes), and includes numerous notes throughout that capture Shelton’s sometimes contradictory thoughts on the film’s themes, performance direction, production logistics, production design, shot composition, camera moves, sound design, music, editing, and even links to recipes for foods the characters should eat.
This paper will draw from interviews with Shelton (including the author’s own interview with her before her death) and a comparative analysis between the shooting treatment and the finished film to examine the viability of the shooting treatment as an lean conceptual tool for independent filmmaking.
Andrew Gay’s publications include: an article in the Journal of Screenwriting, an entry in Women Screenwriters: An International Guide, a chapter in Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature, a chapter in the Palgrave Handbook of Script Development, and his self-published open resources Screenplayology.com.
Andrew Gay
Southern Oregon University
Arnold’s Imagery: The Influence of Female writer(-directors) in Contemporary Cinema
Laura Kirk
My proposal is based on a book chapter I am working on and will discuss the work of Andrea Arnold and her ripple effect on contemporary cinema. I will focus on American Honey and discuss how her work evolved confidently with her singular voice. My work in the film as an actor gives me further insight. Many film critics use this film as a reference point and discuss her influence. Imagery, symbolism, and message have been discussed in academia, which I will include but my focus will be on the inception and writing that leads to collaborative production. Inherently the character design is radically inclusive and based on acute empathetic observation of the marginalized. Neorealism and new realism are evident. A healthy disregard for gender propriety elevates the stories further. In this film the examination of capitalism, those on the fringe peeking inside at those centered in society, and integration of how place affects people came from Arnold living the writing. Arnold provided further insight and discussion of her intensely unique process to support and illuminate this analysis and her voice. The desire to explore and share the interconnectivity of life in both nature and humanity cross-pollinates audiences with subjects for a better understanding of our shared existence. Empathy inspires action and exposes exploitation.
Laura Kirk
Laura Kirk
University of Kansas, Lawrence
Thursday 11:15 am-12:45 pm
Panel 1 - B
Female Characters in Genre Films
Moderator: Anna Weinstein
The Grove: An Exploration of Female Archetypes in Folks Horror
Maxine Gee
Folk Horror, as a sub-genre or a mode, has been defined by Adam Scovell (2017) through a chain of interconnected elements; landscape, isolation, skewed beliefs and rituals or supernatural happenings. Developing from an identification of similar elements within what is termed the ‘unholy trilogy’ of The Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Stan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973) this sub-genre now encompasses a wide-ranging body of scholarship and has seen a resurgence with contemporary films such as The Witch (2015) Midsommar (2019) and Men (2022). Within the sub-genre, female characters are presented in a variety of roles from innocent victim to the perpetrator of ritualistic acts, often shifting between these spaces across the course of the narrative. No character embodies this ambiguity of role and challenge to/consolidation of patriarchal power as the figure of the witch (Buckley 2019).
In this paper, I will establish key archetypes of female roles within folk horror, before examining how I have experimented with them within my short research screenplay The Grove.. Inspired by the structure of Akutagawa’s short story, In the Grove, or its adaptation as Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, The Grove explores one female-presenting character, Elowen, from three different perspectives. To her husband Jack, Elowen is an innocent victim of a ritualistic crime; to Hayley, a social worker investigating the disappearance of homeless people, Elowen is a monstrous other; and from her own perspective Elowen, a personification of the forest, cares about the preservation of her non-human community. Through analysis of screenwriting techniques used both within my screenplay, and within the screenplays of produced folk horror films I will demonstrate how multiple female voices are portrayed in the sub-genre.
Maxine Gee is a Principal Academic in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University. She holds a PhD by Creative Practice in Screenwriting from the University of York. In 2015, she was a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Summer Fellow. As a creative practitioner, Maxine has written science fiction for film, theatre and prose. Her award-winning short films Terminal (2018) and Standing Woman (2020) have screened at a range of international film festivals. Maxine has published on science fiction screenwriting for BSFA FOCUS magazine, posthuman noir in Cinema: Journal of Film and Philosophy; web series in the Palgrave Handbook of Script Development and on her practice research screenplay Golems Inc. in Sightlines: Filmmaking in the Academy. She has recently received funding from the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2022 for an interactive theatre event exploring neurodivergence and how future humans are portrayed in science fiction film and television.
Maxine Gee
Bournemouth University
Storytelling for a spaceship called, “The Boy’s Club”” Studying Arati Kadav’s films, India’s first female sci-fi writer-director
Anubha Yadav
"This female (writer) director has boldly gone where no Indian woman has gone before", is how Arati Kadav is described in Grazia, the popular global women's fashion and celebrity gossip magazine. The description is somewhat akin to how Kalpana Chawla is described, the first female Indian-American astronaut who went into space and inspired generations of Indian girls. Using space exploration and science fiction in playful analogy in this paper, I study Arati Kadav's foray into producing, writing and directing science fiction films in Bollywood. Kadav, the recipient of the BAFTA Breakthrough Awards 2022 made her recent feature film debut with the sci-fi film, Cargo. Apart from studying her films, in this paper I also attempt to understand her process of ideation & writing, the challenges of being the only female director-writer-producer working in the science fiction genre in Bollywood, a genre that hardly gets any attention in India. The paper will also explore how Kadav negotiates the gendered nature of the genre and its audience. 4-6 keywords: #Scifi #Kadav #Bollywood #screenwriter #director #Bafta
Anubha Yadav is a novelist, screenwriter and academic at University of Delhi, India. She is the author of Scripting Bollywood: Candid Conversations with Women Screenwriters of Hindi Cinema, an anthology of fourteen interviews of women screenwriters in Bombay cinema from the 1970s to present times (Kali Books, June 2021). Her debut novel, The Anger of Saintly Men was published in 2021. Her ongoing doctoral thesis focuses on women screenwriters in the Bombay film industry. Her research interest includes- screenwriting history, gender & screenwriting & the screenwriter as a researcher of screenwriting.
Anubha Yadav
University of Delhi
[email protected]
The Thematic Relevance Of The Female Mentor In Searching For Bobby Fischer
Paolo Braga
The proposed presentation aims to highlight the importance of the protagonist’s mother in the screenplay for Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), written and directed by Steven Zaillian. The critically acclaimed film is an adaptation of the homonymous memoir, where journalist Fred Waitzkin tells the story of his seven-year-old son Josh, an enfant prodige chess player. Zaillian – the noticeable screenwriter behind, among others, Awakenings and Schindler’s List – conceives his script counting on a starting material that offers little contribution in terms of structure and conflict. Waitzkin’s book consists of a series of short chapters/essays addressing different aspects and situations in the world of competitive chess. Drawing on this unrefined base, Zaillian tells the delicate, engaging, little but deep story of a kid and his father whose relationship is put at risk when the talent of the former becomes an obsession for the latter. My analysis will first consider some typical elements of Zaillian’s writing style. Starting from – to put it in producer Scott Rudin’s words – his “compassionate strain”. I will then put emphasis on how the writer handles two elements which he himself declared to be fundamental, tone and realism. Finally, I will focus on how in the screenplay a structure only apparently simple results in a compelling exploration of the theme, which could be stated in the following way: “You lose your good heart, you lose the magic of life”. Zaillian combines the arcs of three characters. The inner journey of Josh (Max Pomeranc) along an almost circular trajectory triggers the maturation of his father Fred (Joe Mantegna) and of his instructor Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley), who will both overtake their ambition and fear of losing. Bonnie Waitzkin’s character (Joan Allen) – different from the real woman because in the story she is not involved in Josh’s career – has a pivotal function as a mentor of Josh and as a critical conscience of her husband and of Josh’s instructor. It is through her that the audience becomes aware of the moral stakes of the film.
Paolo Braga is Associate Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), where he teaches Screenwriting, Semiotics and Journalism. At Università Cattolica he also teaches at the Masters in International Screenwriting and Production. He has published extensively on the topics of the construction of empathy with characters and of US television series. The rhetorical and persuasive dimensions of storytelling are his general research area, which he has treated in several articles and books. Among his most recent publications are Words in action. Forms and Techniques of Film Dialogue (Peter Lang, 2015) and Armando Fumagalli, Cassandra Albani, Paolo Braga (Eds), Storia delle serie tv (volumes 1 and 2), Dino Audino, Rome 2021.
Paolo Braga
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Ruth Rose – An Eye for Adventure
Natalie Cash Petersson
A sense of adventure and an effortless command of storytelling served to transport Ruth Rose (1896–1978) from the bright lights of the Broadway stage, to the dense rainforests of the far tropics, to the biggest screens of Hollywood’s Golden Age, where she would pen one of the most enduring blockbusters of all time.
After an actor’s strike in 1919 left the 25-year-old actress out of work, Rose sent a letter to famed naturalist and explorer William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society's Bronx Zoo, hoping to join his newly established Department of Tropical Research. Not only was Beebe the first to ditch the laboratory in order to study wildlife in its natural habitat, he was ahead of his time in employing women artists, writers and historians as team members.
Rose started as a research assistant but her impressive writing and animal wrangling skills found her serving as Historian and Technicist by 1925 when the Department undertook its ninth expedition aboard the 2,400-ton steam yacht Arcturus. On this six-month journey, Ruth met and fell in love with the cinematographer hired to document the trip. They later married and in 1933, Ruth wrote her first screenplay. Co-directed by her husband and his business partner, the film would open to critical acclaim, shatter box office and attendance records, rescue a motion picture from bankruptcy, and be remade countless times over. It was a spectacle unlike any ever seen before, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or is it? How could the writer of one of the biggest movies of all time become lost to time?
Ruth Rose infused her writing with a sense of adventure and poetry while grounding her action in real world experiences gained from a life of exploration. In this paper, I hope to reveal the little known life of the beauty who killed the beast.
Natalie Cash Petersson is the executive video producer for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a global organization that harnesses the power of its worldwide field conservation programs and its zoos and aquarium in New York to save wildlife and wild places. With three decades of experience in the industry, Cash produces short-form programming about WCS projects for multiple platforms. Prior to joining WCS, she was a series producer and writer at the Emmy Award-winning documentary production company Pangolin Pictures.
Natalie Cash Petersson
Executive Producer
Wildlife Conservation Society, USA
Thursday 11:15 am-12:45 pm
Panel 1 - C
Those Who Came Before Us – Ancestors And Archival Finds
Moderator: Lizzie Germann
“Here’s Johnson!” – Re-assessing the development and writing of The Shining
Paolo Russo
The materials available at the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London since 2007 have triggered a revolution in so-called Kubrick studies. The sheer wealth of primary sources has started to bust decades-old myths – mostly fuelled by auteur theory bias – to reveal “another” Kubrick who valued collaborations at every single stage of his projects.
This paper focuses on the development of The Shining (1980) and, more specifically, on the contribution of writer Diane Johnson, who Kubrick chose over Stephen King for the adaptation of King’s source novel. The research underpinning this paper will combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to an empirical analysis of relevant primary sources found at the Archive – e.g. close analysis of the novel, outlines, treatments, breakdowns, screenplay drafts, countless handwritten and typed annotations, and more – with a recent interview with Diane Johnson conducted by myself, and compare findings and results with existing secondary sources that have so far rarely gone beyond generic facts or summary, often anecdotal reports of King’s dissatisfaction with Johnson and Kubrick adaptation of his novel.
The aim is to highlight factual data to examine and re-assess the development process of a paradigmatic Kubrick film such as The Shining in fine detail based on factual analysis; as well as recognize the value of Diane Johnson’s contribution throughout the process.
Paolo Russo is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University (UK).
Paolo Russo
Oxford Brookes University
Engaging Archives and Oral History: Storytelling in collaboration with The Ancestors.
Desha Rae Dauchan
Offering a fresh reflection from a summer of research in San Francisco followed by a writers' residency, I will present a case study sketching out how a deep dive into archives and oral history uniquely impacts the development of a historical fiction television series. Pushing against erasure, how does a long engagement with first-person accounts in oral history influence character development? How does engagement with an archived "negro community" newspaper from segregated times inform and bring nuance to world-building for a story rooted in actual events? How does a prose-first approach impact character interiority across mediums, from short stories to screenplay? Revisiting adaptation theory and practice, I will analyze how recentering and juxtaposing perspectives impact my praxis and approach to historical fiction.
"Untitled" – Harlem of The West Inspired Television Series.
Inspired by an ad in the 1952 Sun Reporter newspaper for the opening of Oliver's Fountain & Lunch Counter. The Newest Place- The Finest Food. We never close. Oliver's Fountain & Lunch Room 1566 Ellis St. nr Fillmore- In the Heart of Something-Doing...Open 24 hours a day Sundays and Holidays. Yours for better food, Mr & Mrs. Oliver Roberts.
"Mrs. Roberts" was my grandmother, who never legally went by that name. What is her story?
Desha Rae Dauchan, a San Francisco, California native is both a Howard University and UCLA School of Theatre Film & Television Alumna. An award-winning filmmaker, Desha’s short film works have screened at Sundance, BlackStar, American Black, Pan African, Los Angeles Asian Pacific and Urbanworld Film Festivals to name a few. A participant in an early incarnation of the CBS Directing Initiative, Desha was selected to shadow on the final season of the HBO drama, The Wire. As a writer, Desha explores traditional drama, folklore, the supernatural and magical realism in her feature length and television screenplays. Her writing has found support in the Tribeca All Access program, Film Independent Screenwriters Lab and the Hedgebrook Screenwriters Lab.
Desha is an Associate Professor in The Department of Film & Media Studies at University of California, Irvine. She is excited about innovative approaches to visual storytelling and the sharing of rich human stories.
Desha Rae Dauchan
University of California, Irvine
Eve Unsell: From the Heart (from Columbia)
Randi Barros
Take a character, typically female. She is strong, yet faces injustice, whether by society or by the hands of a domineering or immoral man. Throw many obstacles in her way, but her strong spirit, her will to live truly and honestly, will most often allow her to persevere. This is a plot that Eve Unsell, a pioneering screenwriter of the early 20th century, visited often in the more than 100 scripts that she wrote. Perhaps it’s a bit of her own story as well, as a woman forging her way through a male dominated industry in its infancy. Though she was lauded by Alfred Hitchcock as a formative influence on his career, she and several other groundbreaking female screenwriters have been largely forgotten when the history of America’s film industry is told.
Eve heralded the contributions female screenwriters brought to cinematic storytelling. In an article for The Writer’s Monthly in September, 1922, she wrote, “men usually have the better idea of plot values, while women – having the truer psychological sense, the greater emotional color – will remain their worthy rivals in the field of picture writing; for there is sex in writing, and its attributes and results are more apparent in the creation of pictures, and more valuable there, perhaps, than in any other branch of – yes, let me say it once – of – Art!”
From her early days of being expelled from college for setting off a firecracker in the school chapel to her later years challenging a hierarchical studio system that was growing increasingly hostile to women, Eve Unsell was a woman with spirit. The aim of this presentation is to celebrate Eve Unsell for the compassion that was a hallmark of her storytelling, the passion that allowed her to forge ahead, and the continuing influence which her writing and teachings have had on modern day cinema.
Randi Barros is an award-winning screenwriter, film editor, and professor. Her screenplays and television scripts have been honored at The Writer's Lab, CineStory, the Austin Film Festival, the Athena Writer's Lab, Finish Line, She Called Action and Final Draft's Big Break script competitions. Her screenplay, “The Chicken Festival,” is currently in development.
Recent editing projects include the feature documentary, "Heaven Stood Still: The Life and Times of Willy DeVille," which is touring festivals and theaters worldwide, the short films “Pennies,” “I Live on Your Visits,” and "Trusting Chloe," a comedy short that has won several awards and was nominated for Best Editing at the Paris Film Festival. She edited the PBS documentary, "Lives Well Lived," which has garnered numerous awards and holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Before that, Randi co-edited “Botso, The Teacher From Tblisi,” which was a five time Audience Award winner and a New York Times critics pick.
Randi teaches Storytelling and Filmmaking at Cal Poly University, where she received the Learn by Doing Scholars Award in 2022. She attended the MFA Film Program at Columbia University School of the Arts and received her MFA in Screen and Television Writing from Stephens College.
Randi Barros
California State University, San Luis Obispo
LUNCH BREAK
12:45-2 pm
Provided in Dudley Hall
Thursday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 2 - A
Broad(Er) Presentations On Writing
Moderator: Anna Weinstein
Conflict Isn’t Everything: How to Develop Story Structures Based on Growth and Change
Jennine Lanouette
Female success in the film industry is too often measured by how many women are directing action films and the number of kick-ass heroines showing up as lead characters. This definition of gender parity conveniently upholds a masculine aesthetic in which dueling parties fight it out until one triumphs over the other. The supporting truism to this aesthetic is that all stories are based on conflict. Without conflict you have no story. In this simplistic view of drama, no account is made for stories based on something other than competitive triumph, in which the common good is put before individual gain, in which violence is used as a last resort, in which character interaction is based in emotional authenticity, and in which the driving tension is based as much on emotional conflict within the main character as it is on external conflict between characters. To allow for such nuanced goals within a drama, it is necessary to expand our definition of story to put the focus on the degree of growth or change that is achieved. The progression of a story may or may not play out an external conflict, but it must portray some type of change. It must bring the viewer to a different place from where they started. In the stories that are based on conflict, the change that’s achieved is triumph. In a story wanting to focus on character, the change is internal transformation. In a story putting across a larger thematic meaning, the change is in our understanding of human nature, society or the world-at-large. Conflict is the state of external discordance that functions as a dramatic tool for raising stakes, increasing tension, and driving the story forward. But it is not the defining element of the story. The defining element is change.
Jennine Lanouette is an independent screenwriting lecturer offering online courses in script analysis. She is founder of Screentakes Digital Publishing through which she produces media-rich, interactive digital screenbooks of her lectures. She has lectured at Lucasfilm and Pixar in the San Francisco Bay Area and at The New School and School of Visual Arts in New York. Her story consulting clients include Pixar, Independent Television Service, Film Arts Foundation, Community of Writers and numerous individual writers and directors. She did graduate study in screenwriting at Columbia University and the history of drama at New York University, and undergraduate study in film at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Jennine Lanouette
Independent Lecturer, San Francisco, CA
“Unreal Media” Created the Writers’ Rooms Series to Prepare New Writers
Betsy Marino Leighton
Over the last five years Unreal Media has created the Writers’ Rooms Series which create compelling content, but also to create community, promote inclusivity and generate content that matters. Unreal seeks to give voice to engaging, thoughtful and clever storytellers from all walks of life. Unreal is committed to representation and diversity on screen and in the writers’ room and strives to make the world a more inclusive place. Many of our rooms have been for female creators writing stories about female protagonists. This paper will focus on the female characters that came out of the rooms that were run by female show runners.
San Diego State University film/TV professor Dr. Martha Lauzen, who is the executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film has been examining women in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera for over a decade and while the news is getting better for women, the report found that the number of female creators reached its highest percentage so far, (28%, an increase from 25% in the 2018-2019 TV season and 22% in the 2014-2015 TV season) we still have a long way to go if 50% or more is out target.
Furthermore, the report concluded that when a TV program has at least one female creator, the program is more likely to have more women working behind the scenes and more female protagonists on screen. On programs with at least one-woman creator, “women accounted for 69% of writers versus 20% on programs with no women creators,” according to the report.
In the Unreal Writers Room Series we have found that the female show runners working with female creators have created an environment in the room that is ripe for creativity with nuanced characters that everyone in the room contributed to creating. This paper will explore the techniques and tone set by women showrunners and the effect on the experience and the characters and the content produced.
Betsy Marino Leighton has worked in the film and television industry for twenty-five years, beginning as a Page at NBC Studios. She then went on to work for Scorsese Productions and Clinica Estetica before producing and directing an award-winning documentary, A Six Voice Home. Betsy has produced long form reality and other TV series for Starz, Ovation, Animal Planet, and High Noon Entertainment. In 2014 she cofounded Unreal Media which recently sold their first independent horror feature, Apartment 212. Betsy heads Unreal’s Content Development, overseeing an exciting creative slate of television and web series. Betsy has also written a YA novel for Dutton and has just finished her first adult novel, ‘Progress Notes, which she recently adapted into a screenplay. Betsy holds an undergraduate degree from Barnard College, an MSW from Hunter College, and an MFA in Screenwriting & Television from Stephens College.
Unreal Media tells powerfully entertaining and authentic stories that matter. Established in 2014, the Unreal Media team brings decades of top-tier industry experience to this dynamic, constantly evolving media landscape. Our expertise lies in creating meaningful stories, producing outstanding content, and delivering the goods through channels that guarantee the most exposure. Our team has worked with top-tier companies for decades, including STARZ, HBO, Sony Pictures, Liberty Global, Scorsese Productions, Anchor Bay Entertainment and High Noon Entertainment. The Unreal Media team has been responsible for producing both episodic series (Crash, Spartacus, Party Down) as well as independent films, including Apartment 212. We create opportunity and give voice to engaging, thoughtful, and funny storytellers from all walks of life. Unreal is committed to diversity on-screen and in the writers room.
Betsy Leighton
Independent scholar
Engaging Students: Craft in the Real World - Rethinking the Screenwriting Workshop
Elisha Miranda
Craft is part of the history of Western empire that goes back even to the Ancient Greek and Roman empires, upon which American democratic values are based. Many still talk about plot the way Aristotle wrote about it over two thousand years ago, when he argued that plot should be driven by character. When we continue to teach plot this way, we ignore the many other kinds of plot found in literatures around the world and even the context of Aristotle’s original complaint (he was fed up with the fate/god driven plots popular with tragedians of his time.
What we call craft is in fact nothing more or less than a set of expectations. Those expectation are shaped by workshop, by reading, by awards, industry and gatekeepers, by biases about whose stories matter and how they should be told. How we engage with craft expectations is what we can control as writers and creative scholars. The more we know about the context of those expectations, the more consciously we can engage them.
These expectations are never neutral. They represent the values of the culturally dominant population: in America that means (straight, cis, able, upper-middle-class) white males. When craft is taught unreflexively, within a limited understanding of the canon, it reinforces narrow ideas about whose stories are important and what makes a story beautiful, moving or good. We need to rethink craft and the teaching of it to better serve writers with increasingly diverse backgrounds, which means diverse ways of telling stories. Like in rewriting, the screenwriter must break down what she thinks she knows about her craft to liberate it.
This workshop is intended to further the conversation among scholars, writers, and practice-based researchers to converse about power and craft in both a public and in one’s own personal context. This workshop seeks to offer practical and practicable advice. To make craft accessible and inclusive, we must pull back the curtain on what craft is and does. Writing is power. In this workshop, we will ask what kind of power is it, where does it come from and what does it mean? These questions will be asked in relation to our own writing and the teaching of writing to our students. We will look at redefining teams such as tone, plot, character, structure, etc.. Who is the center of the workshop and who should be? Introducing alternative methods into the classroom, creating syllabi, grading and revision.
Elisha Miranda-Ramirez is a Gen X writer, director, producer and professor of Puerto Rican descent who was raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. Her mother’s family became multi-generational Hularicans when they were forced to leave Puerto Rico after a major hurricane in the early 1900s to work the sugar cane fields of Hawaii. She founded the production company, Sister Outsider Entertainment and nonprofit Chica Luna Productions in East Harlem, NY, where she wrote, produced and directed award-winning films. She received her MFA in directing and screenwriting from Columbia University where she studied with the esteemed director - Mira Nair and won the Tribeca Film Festival- All Access Award, a NALIP Writer’s Lab Fellowship, Project Involve and a Nicholl Fellowship Finalist.
Elisha has published novellas, non-fiction and YA novels with Simon & Schuster and Knopf for which she won the YALSA Award and a National Book Foundation honorable mention. Her television pilot—THE ELEMENTARIANS won the 2021 PGA Creates Fellowship and is being developed by 3PAS Studios. THE ELEMENTARIANS is also being adapted into a young adult novel for publication. She was also a recipient of the 2022 National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Scriptwriters Room for her TV pilot - CHOSEN FAMILY.
For the past decade she has been teaching writing for film and television at the university level as she raises three kiddos. After serving as Chair of the Film and Theatre Department at San Jose State University, she moved to Southern California two years ago and is now an Associate Professor of Screenwriting for Film and TV at Chapman University in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. She is repped by Kaplan Stahler.
Elisha Miranda
Chapman University, California
Teaching Subtext and Indirection in Dialogue
Paul Gulino
Students and other writers are frequently warned to avoid writing dialogue that is “on the nose.” Such dialogue has been defined as “obvious, unfunny, and something we’ve seen before,” and “writing dialogue and activity in which a character’s deepest thoughts and feelings are expressed by what the character says and does.” The solution often proffered to writers is the use of “subtext” to ensure the characters don’t say exactly what they mean. This can be a confusing bit of advice, since beginning writers are often struggling just to be articulate. How can they be encouraged both to communicate effectively and communicate in some roundabout way at the same time? In this presentation I will suggest strategies that demystify the process by distinguishing subtext from indirection, and showing how time-honored tools such as metaphor, irony, metonymy and wit can solve the “on the nose” problem, and yield more dynamic scenes and deeper, more layered characters in the process.
Paul Gulino is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright, whose book, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach has been adopted as a textbook at schools and universities around the globe. His latest book, The Science of Screenwriting: The Neuroscience Behind Storytelling Strategies was published in 2018. In 2023 he contributed a chapter on the history of American screenwriting pedagogy to the Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies. His credits include two produced screenplays in addition to numerous commissioned works and script consultations; his plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles. He has lectured in the U.S. and Europe, most recently at the Story Academy in Sweden and for Disney Animation. He studied screenwriting at Columbia University with Frantisek Daniel and Milos Forman, and taught screenwriting at the University of Southern California for five years before accepting a position at Chapman University in 1998, where he is currently a tenured professor.
Paul Gulino
Chapman University
Thursday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 2 - B
Women Writers Writing Social Justice
Australian screenwriter and director Catherine Hill whose debut feature film is Some Happy Day (2021)/Older women as screenwriters and lead protagonists/homelessness.
Joanne Tindale
Australian director and screenwriter Catherine Hill’s debut social realist feature film Some Happy Day (2021) depicts a day in the life of Tina, an older woman sleeping rough on the streets of Melbourne. Hill’s female focused story reflects an interdisciplinary approach underpinned by what this presentation will discuss as a ‘strength-based’ framework for screenwriting, derived from social welfare practices familiar to Hill. Focused on Hill’s script development process, this presentation investigates how her life experiences as a case manager and crisis worker supporting marginalised people for over twenty years informed and inspired the film, and how she overcame obstacles to develop the project and bring it to fruition. The research methodology comprises an interview with the screenwriter and an evaluation of the Impact Campaign to assess the influence of the film. This presentation will also analyse how agency is constrained for the lead character of Tina, which is significant because older women are generally underrepresented in Australian feature films and because women comprise sixty percent of the homeless in Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2021). Some Happy Day was supported by the Sacred Heart Mission, and the Salvation Army Crisis Centre with the assistance and support of the local community who have a lived experience of homelessness. The film is accompanied by an Impact Campaign around housing which aims to create social change by advocating for a National Housing Policy. Some Happy Day is a powerful example of how an older female screenwriter with a team of collaborators negotiated screen industry norms, practices, and hurdles to create a feature film that tackles the significant global issue of homelessness.
Joanne Tindale is a PhD candidate at Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Joanne is an emerging screenwriter whose research interests encompass gender inequity, screenwriting, and the underrepresentation of older women on screen. Prior to entering film school, she worked as a manager in the not-for-profit sector, a project manager at the Australian Agency for International Development and previously as a registered nurse. Joanne holds a Bachelor of Film and Screen Media Production with First Class Honours, a Bachelor of Asian and International Studies, and a Graduate Diploma in International Law. Joanne’s Honours research on writing female lead protagonists over the age of 65 was published in the journal Studies in Australasian Cinema in July 2021.
Joanne Tindale
Griffith Film School
[email protected]
Voices, Silences, Images: The Narrative Strategies of Tatiana Huezo in her Documentaries and Fictions
Diego Sheinbaum
With three feature films in her filmography (two documentaries and one fiction), the filmmaker of Salvadoran origin, Tatiana Huezo (1972), has become one of the great exponents of Mexican cinematography. Her films address the extreme violence that the Civil War unleashed in El Salvador and the impact of organized crime and the forced disappearances of women in Mexico. This paper analyzes the narrative resources that she uses in her documentaries and that have revolutionized the way of conceiving the documentary in the global south. What are the narrative strategies that she displays in El lugar más pequeño (2011) and Tempestad (2016)? How has working with the testimonies of women helped build the plots, characters and settings of the fiction Noche de Fuego (2021)? What other documentary tools did she used when adapting Jennifer Clement's novel Prayers for the Stolen? The paper combines the narrative analysis of the documentaries and of the screenplay Noche de fuego.
Diego Sheinbaum (Mexico City, 1974) Doctor in Comparative Literature and researcher at the Poetic Center of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). His lines of research are: 1) The reflexive, parodic and carnivalesque tradition in Literature and Cinema; 2) Poetics and Rhetoric of the Screenplay in Mexico. He has been a screenwriter for National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Maroma Producciones. In 2017 he published his book Kafka, Defoe, and Dostoevsky in the Writings of J. M. Coetzee and in 2021 The Poetics of Slaughterhouse-Five. His most recent articles are “Reflections on Cinematographic Writing in Mexico (1965-2013)”, “The Poetics of Aristotle among Hollywood Screenwriters” In the summer of 2023, he and Maricruz Castro Ricalde will be publishing the book Behind the Shadows:Women Screenwriters at the Turn of the Century in Mexico.
Diego Sheinbaum
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Mexican Cinema about missing persons:
Juan Carlos Carrillo Cal y Mayor
More than 90,000 people in Mexico have been declared as “missing” from 2006 to date. This is a result of the drug trafficking activity in this country and the scant efforts of the authorities to combat it. Nearly a quarter of the missing persons are women, but in any case, all of them affect a woman close to them: a wife or—specially—a mother. Many recent Mexican films have addressed this social problem, several of them from the female perspective. This presentation will address four recent Mexican films, written and directed by women filmmakers, and whose story is centered on a female protagonist who is an indirect victim in the drama of disappearances: Identifying Features (Sin señas particulares, Fernanda Valadez, 2020), Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego, Tatiana Huezo, 2021), La Civil (Teodora Mihai, 2021) and Noise (Ruido, Natalia Beristáin, 2022). It is argued that the female gaze contributes to giving a more human meaning to these stories, focusing on violent content from a point of view that does not tend towards exploitation or spectacle, but rather to make evident the social problem and the indirect victims of this serious problem, which are mainly women.
Juan Carlos Carrillo Cal y Mayor was born in Mexico City in 1988. Studied an undergraduate degree in Hispanic Philology and one in Audiovisual Communication, both at the University of Navarra (Spain). Currently a PhD student at Universidad de los Andes (Chile) with a thesis on violence in contemporary Mexican cinema. Academic researcher in aspects related to screenwriting, narrative and poetics in
Since 2016 he is director of the Degree in Communication at Universidad Panamericana (Mexico City), where he teaches classes in History of Cinema, Audiovisual Narratives and Written Communication. Script analyst and film critic in the web www.palomitascaramelizadas.com (in Spanish).
Juan Carlos Carrillo Cal y Mayor
Universidad Panamericana
Thursday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 2 - C
Full Focus On The Female Gaze
Moderator: Kris Somerville
Betty Comden - Incidental Feminist?
Lee Anne Lowry
Betty Comden and Adolph Green were a screenwriting duo that never had to worry about being overlooked, as most screenwriters do. They were so deeply embedded in the theater, a craft which honors writers, that Hollywood couldn’t forget them either. Often with famous pairs, the individual can become neglected, as if they are nothing without their counterpart. For this presentation, I will focus more on one half of the duo: Betty Comden. This presentation dives into Comden’s early life—shaped by anti-Semitism and generational trauma, the themes that seeped from her life experiences into her musicals, her journey of writing with a life-long, platonic male writing partner, and her incidental feminist approach to writing.
LeeAnne Lowry earned an MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College in 2019. She now works as the Press & Marketing Manager for Ragtag Film Society, which oversees Ragtag Cinema and True/False Film Fest. She also writes the occasional book review for The Journal of Screenwriting and works as an adjunct instructor for the University of Missouri (Intro to Visual Journalism and Strategic Communication), Stephens College (Women in Film), and Columbia College (Intro to Screenwriting). LeeAnne writes and directs projects for her production company, Papa Squat Productions. Her short film The Treadmill Switcher is currently on the festival circuit, having premiered at QFest St. Louis in May of this year.
Lee Anne Lowry
Independent filmmaker
A Pioneer Turkish Woman Screenwriter: Ayse Sasa and the Feminine Gaze in Early Turkish Cinema
Elif Fâtıma Görken
This paper recovers Ayşe Şasa as a woman pioneer screenwriter and her impact on Turkish cinema. It examines her screenplays as well as the ways in which her work has been overlooked and under-researched. She’s written 31 screenplays, won multiple awards, authored six books, and served as a mentor for young screenwriters. Her most notable films are; Son Kuşlar 1965 (Last Birds), Murad’ın Türküsü 1965 (Murad’s Folk Song), Ah Güzel İstanbul 1966 (Oh, Beautiful Istanbul), Yedi Kocalı Hürmüz 1971 (Hürmüz with Seven Husbands) and Gramofon Avrat 1987 (Gramophone Woman). The research for this paper involved translating many excerpts from interviews, memoirs, and screenplays from Turkish to English. It offers an in-depth analysis of Ayşe Şasa’s screenplays with a focus on gender and the feminine gaze, contextualizing her screenplays within Turkey’s history. Her films changed the landscape of Turkish cinema in regards to how women were written and how they were viewed. In the ’70s, she was among the pioneers who set out to construct a national film movement, characterized by stories centering the Anatolian working class. She entered the film industry right after the 1960 coup d'etat, a turning point in Turkey’s history. Her spiritual transformation into a Sufi practitioner in her later years inspired her to write the memoir “A Soul’s Journey” about her personal healing path. Şasa’s life was about shifting narratives both inwardly and outwardly and this research invites shifts of its own as it challenges existing narratives of women’s impact on Turkish cinema.
Elif Fâtıma Görken is a screenwriter, director, and teaching artist. Her work explores visual storytelling at the intersections of gender, migranthood, intergenerational healing, and Islamic mysticism as decolonial cinema. Elif Fâtıma’s research uncovers histories of women and queer screenwriter pioneers with a focus on Turkish screenwriter, Ayşe Şasa. Elif Fâtıma's short film she wrote and directed, 'Loose Threads (2021)' has been selected for international film festivals such as Toronto International Women's Film Festival and Berlin International Art Film Festival. She was chosen to participate in the Warner Bros Early Career program for filmmaking training. She is a teaching artist in NYC, guiding youth in film and doing script coverage for Athena Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Screenwriting for TV and Film from Stephens College.
Elif Fatima Gorken
Independent filmmaker
From Damsel to Detective: Joan Harrison's Influence on Women-Centered Narratives in Suspense and Thriller CinemaMichelle O’Connor
Groundbreaking screenwriter–producer Joan Harrison once told the Los Angeles Times that a film cannot be a success if it does not “satisfy the feminine point of view.” Harrison made sure that her films and television series did just that. During the 1940s, she reinvented film noir and suspense cinema—bringing women’s stories and narratives to the forefront—while shaping director Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic style. She wrote the screenplays for the classic thrillers Rebecca, Suspicion, Foreign Correspondent, and Saboteur (all of which were directed by Alfred Hitchcock) and produced Phantom Lady and Nocturne, among many others. A critical and commercial success, Rebecca received eleven Academy Award nominations, including one for Harrison for Best Screenplay, and won Best Picture and Best Cinematography.
This presentation examines how Joan Harrison introduced women-centered narratives into thriller and suspense cinema and was instrumental in constructing the popular (and profitable) thriller genre we have today.
Michele O’Connor received her MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College and attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Professional Program in Screenwriting. She is an Adjunct Professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she teaches storytelling and scriptwriting. As a writer, Michele’s screenplays and television scripts explore our relationship to our past within the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, and thriller.
Michele Dagle O’Connor
Marquette University, Wisconsin
Working Group Table Reads
4-6 pm
Windsor Auditorium
Moderator: Maxine Gee
6-7:30 pm
Lela Raney Hall (LRW)
Costume Exhibition
A Star is Born: How Fashion Supported Screen Writers in Creating Iconic Female Characters
7:30-9 pm
LRW Mezzanine
Friday
8-9 am
Continental Breakfast
Dudley Hall
9-10:30 am
Windsor Auditorium
Break
10:30-11 am
Friday 11 am-12:30 pm
Panel 3 - A
Achieving Outside of Hollywood
Moderator: Desha Deschaun
Case studies on individual female screenwriter’s work: Letícia Wierzchowski and her work as adapted writer and screenwriter for Brazilian TV
Clarissa Mazon Miranda
Letícia Wierzchowski is a Brazilian writer and screenwriter, who reached fame with the novel “A Casa das Sete Mulheres” (The house of seven women), from 2002. This period drama was adapted for TV series in 2003. Success gave Leticia the opportunity to diverse her career path becoming also a screenwriter. In 2014, she signed the script for the TV series “O Tempo e o Vento” (The time and the wind), based on the homonymous novel of Brazilian author Erico Veríssimo. When telling her own story, Letícia highlights the difficulties that she faced when trying to be accepted as a female writer. Being born and living in the southmost state of Brazil, she wrote manuscripts of novels and soap operas scripts sending them to publish houses and TV channels, respectively. It was only when she found a story that had to do with her own personal background that she was accepted. This paper is based on a course taken by this author with Letícia Wierzchowski in 2014; and on an exclusive interview offered by Wierzchowski about her path achieving success as a writer, and then as a screenwriter in Brazilian market and also about her first great success, the novel that holds seven strong women as main characters. As theoretical framework, we use Hutcheon (2013) on the thematic of adaptation; Douglas (2005) and Epstein (2006) on the thematic of writing TV Series; Welch (2018) and McVeigh and Miranda (2020) on the thematic of female screenwriters.
Clarissa Mazon Miranda
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2323-112X
Holds a Ph.D. in Letters at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (Brazil) since 2018. Her PhD thesis explores the intersemiotic translation of novels into movie scripts. Holds a Master in Midiatic Communication at the same institution (2012) and a bachelor’s in journalism by Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2005). Studies at the Master en Guion Audiovisual of The Core Entertainment School (Madrid). Works as a lecturer for Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade; as PR and international affairs assistant for Fundação Antonio Meneghetti; as a journalist for the magazine Performance Líder, as cultural coordinator for the Recanto Maestro Youth Orchestra; and as a free-lancer screenwriter. Has worked as director, producer and screenwriter of 2 feature documentaries and 10 short documentaries. It is a member of the Screenwriting Research Network, being member of its Executive Council as Early Career Researcher, and a member of the Association of Adaptation Studies.
Clarissa Miranda
Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade (Brazil)
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: The radical hope of decolonized Indigenous cinema and the movement away from extractive storytelling
Madi Crist
Drums are considered sacred among many Indigenous peoples. They represent the pulse—the heartbeat of animals, people, and Mother Earth. At many pow-wow celebrations, you will see a group of drummers gathered around one big drum creating music, rhythm, and poetry.
If this feeling of a heartbeat could exist in a filmmaker, it would be Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. Tailfeathers is a proud award-winning Blackfoot and Sámi woman. She is an actor, producer, director, writer, storyteller, and advocate for her Kainai First Nation (Blood Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy) and Sámi (Norway) communities. She began her career as an actor in 2006. After feeling jaded by the long misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples and women of color, she took cinema into her own hands. In 2011 she released her first short documentary. Like much of her work, it was a response to the injustices happening in her Kainai community. In this essay, we explore her impact on the mediums of narrative fiction, docudrama, documentary, mockumentary, and experimental. We come full circle to her latest feature-length documentary to look again at the resilience of her people. She says, “it’s a very radical thing to be able to feel joy, love, and hope, especially considering everything [Indigenous] people have been through and continue to face [daily]” (Karounos, 2022). In every shape and form, Tailfeathers is radical– in her approach to reimagining the process of filmmaking into collaborative forms centering cinema as a tool for healing and hope. She is a force of nature in front of and behind the lens. Devoted to the authentic representation of women, and Indigenous peoples, she empowers artists to shift the narratives– to change the stories that can be told and who can tell them.
Madison Crist (she/her) is a graduate of Stephens College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in digital filmmaking with minors in creative writing and music. She recently received her Master of Fine Arts degree in TV & Screenwriting at Stephens College in May 2023. With a love for storytelling in all its forms she recognizes the responsibility and power films have to inspire, connect, and challenge. She brings these beliefs to every cinematic project from production to analysis to screenwriting.
Madison Crist
Independent Scholar
“The use of Melodrama and the ‘Nota Roja’ (Sensationalist Gore News) in Paz Alicia Garciadiego's Screenwriting.
Maria DePaoli
Paz Alicia Garciadiego, one of the most prolific and prestigious contemporary Mexican screenwriters, deconstructs the conventional melodrama in cinema since her first collaboration with her husband, Mexican director Arturo Ripstein. In The Realm of Fortune (1986)—an adaptation of Juan Rulfo ́s The Golden Cockrel (1980)— it is already feasible to observe the trademarks of Garciadiego ́s continuous work, such as characters who deviate from traditional gender roles and archetypes through sordid, grotesque, and neo-surrealist situations that she aims to achieve. In my interview with Garciadiego (2014), she reiterates her interest in dislocating “morality” and its typical expressions in conventional melodrama: the exaltation of religion, the family, and the father and mother figures. For example, to confront the mother archetype established in traditional melodrama to fulfill masculine obsessions and desires, the mothers in Garciadiego’s screenplays are far from the sanctified characters of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema: obedient, submissive, sacrificial, and virtuous. Garciadiego’s mothers are disobedient, rebellious, aggressive, and display a sexual drive. Another element that has been overlooked by screenplay scholars, is Garciadiego’s exploration of “la nota roja” (sensationalist gore news), inspired on historical violence and homicides sensationalized in newspapers and television. To demonstrate Garciadiego’s ability to re-elaborate traditional narrative, I analyze both the neo-melodrama and “la nota roja” in Deep Crimson (1996), a dramatization of the story of the “Lonely Hearts Killers” – Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck – who murdered several women in the 1940s, and Bleak Street (2015), inspired by a factual homicide newspaper article about two old prostitutes who killed a pair of ring-wrestler dwarfs. In both films Garciadiego skillfully crafts the grotesque in sequences, scenes, and dialogues to re-imagine the background of actual homicides, and the motives behind her murderous characters.
Dr. María Teresa DePaoli is Professor of Spanish at Kansas State University. She received her doctorate degree from Purdue University in 2001. Her research focuses on Latin American & Latinx Literature and Culture, Mexican film, and cultural studies. Her peer-reviewed publications have appeared in Letras Femeninas, Inter-Disciplinary Press, and Palgrave Macmillan, among others. Her monograph, The Mexican Screenplay: A Study of the Invisible Genre, and Interviews with Women Screenwriters (2014) was published by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. She is co-editor with Laura Kanost of Las guionistas: A Bilingual Anthology of Mexican Women Screenwriters (2017). Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. Arizona State University Press. DePaoli is also co-editor with Floyd Merrell of the second edition of Las culturas y civilizaciones latinoamericanas (2017).
Maria DePaoli
Kansas State University
Friday 11 am-12:30 pm
Panel 3 - B
The Function Of Female Characters In Narrative
Moderator: Anna Weinstein
Female Characters in Frank Daniel’s Czech Films
Jan Černík
Before his emigration from Czechoslovakia to the USA in 1969, Frank Daniel was involved in the development and production of many films. Although some of the films were very successful and popular at the time of their release, they are almost forgotten today. It is noteworthy that in many of the films he wrote or directed, female characters have an active role or are even the main characters in the stories.
The aim of this paper is to show what function female characters had in the narrative of Frank Daniel's films from 1949 to 1968. As far as I know, the representation of women in his scripts was not subject to a perspective informed by feminist theory. Rather, Daniel's perspective was shaped by a desire to tell stories well. This entailed at times the need to work with stereotypes, but at other times the filmmaker's need to break free from stereotypes. In this paper I will be interested in the function of female characters in narrative - how information is conveyed through them, how they shape perspective, what stylistic patterns are associated with them, and what themes and motifs they carry with them.
Jan Černík
In my research, I combine an interest in the topics of Czech and Czechoslovak cinema, film industries, and screenwriting with a theoretical framework of analytic philosophy. I believe that in an exploration of audiovisual culture, we have to consider the applicability of our findings. I graduated in film studies and philosophy and received my Ph.D. degree in film history in 2018. Recently I edited a special issue on screenwriting in Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Besides research in screenwriting history, I am interested in the stylometry of screenplays, and cognitivist theories.
Jan Černík
Palacký University
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women: A very personal and intimate inspiration for a worldwide success
Armando Fumagalli
The Little Women written and directed by Greta Gerwig has been released to critical acclaim and to a great commercial success (220 million of gross, out of a 40 million budget). It had 6 Oscar nominations, and there was debate about Gerwig not been nominated as best director, something that she certainly deserved.
This film is a sum of apparently opposite qualities. Both very classical in respecting the values and characters of the original novel, but also extremely innovative in many ways, and especially in the most clever strategy of putting the classical ending into a narrative frame that questions the role of women in XIX Century society. The film also questions the relations between art and money, creativity and the control of producers. The film is also both universal and very intimate: Gerwig says that Alcott’s novel had been of great inspiration from the time she was a teen ager, for her desire to be a writer, and she deeply identified herself both with the character of Jo, and with the life of Louisa May Alcott, who had to struggle against many difficulties to affirm herself as a respected author.
This is one of the very few projects in mainstream Hollywood cinema written, directed and produced by women. Also, the three women serve as producers: Amy Pascal, Denise Di Novi and Robin Swicord. It is more often known that it has also a very strong cast of women, from Saoirse Ronan to Emma Watson, from Meryl Streep to Laura Dern.
In my paper I would like to go into three main points:
- The meaning of this story to Greta Gerwig and how it is connected with her own life.
- The novelty and effectiveness of some narrative choices that she made in the script.
- Some aspects of the direction (direction of actors, the staging, etc.).
Armando Fumagalli is Director of the Master Program in International Screenwriting and Production at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a program that has trained a new generation of successful writers and producers in Italy. He also teaches “History and Industry of International Cinema” and “Writing and Producing for Animation” at the M.A. in “The Art and Industry of Narration: from Literature to cinema and Tv”. Since 1999, he is a script consultant for the International projects of Lux vide, like the three seasons of Medici. Masters of Florence and the Tv series Leonardo (2021, Rai – Sony Pictures Television). His last books are L’adattamento da letteratura a cinema, 2 vols. (2020) and –edited with Cassandra Albani and Paolo Braga- Storia delle serie Tv, 2 vols. (2021).
Armando Fumagalli
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Friday 11 am-12:30 pm
Panel 3 - C
Broad(Er) Presentations On Writing – The Sequel
Moderator: Shannon Dobson Fopeano
How Behavioral Science can support screenwriting research in developing effective writing tools
Danica Renn-Giles
There is no shortage of screenwriting manuals, courses, and consultants. Yet, many of the most commonly used character and plot development concepts, such as emotional change in main characters (in Western stories; e.g., Field, 2005), are not well understood. For example, what are character emotions? Do only the character’s emotions change or also her actions, goals, values, etc.? How do they change? This lack of precise definitions and relational understanding of central concepts often leads to difficulties when learning, teaching, and practicing screenwriting, including communication problems among writers and with screenplay readers such as editors and producers (see also Cattrysse, 2004).
The conference paper will argue that an interdisciplinary approach applying behavioral (and other) sciences to screenwriting research can help (begin to) solve these problems. Specifically, the paper suggests that behavioral science offers evidence-based insights about real human beings (e.g., about the nature and content of emotions, social values, etc.) that are also relevant to the development of fictional characters. Also, it is argued that a scientific approach to developing screenwriting concepts can produce more precise definitions, from which more concrete yet flexible writing tools can be developed, and which enable us to empirically test these concepts and their effects on story appeal (e.g., do audiences indeed prefer stories with character change, which types of change, are there gender differences, etc.) (see also, e.g., Cattrysse, 2004, and Eder, 2010, who have long called for empirical testing). The proposed approach will be illustrated, amongst others, with examples from my own research and teaching.
Danica Renn-Giles is a social psychologist with a longstanding interest in screenwriting and the application of psychological insights to character and plot development. Currently, she is in the final year of an interdisciplinary PhD in psychology and screenwriting at Royal Holloway University of London (UK), as part of which she has developed and tested a comprehensive psycho-narratological model of characters’ Wants and Needs. Based on these and other psychological findings she has developed several hands-on screenwriting tools, which she is teaching MA Screenwriting students. Danica has completed a BSc and MSc Psychology at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and has worked as a behaviour change consultant in the UK with clients such as Cass Business School, Volkswagen, and the NHS. She has also worked as a story and audience insight consultant for StoryFutures, a government- funded initiative, on an Augmented Reality experience for Heathrow Airport and Costa.
Danica Renn-Giles
Royal Holloway, UK
iTube: A Practice-Led Research Project in Digital Storytelling"
Ann Peeters
This talk will present the interactive installation ‘iTube’ which invites onlookers to discover 50 personal stories through digital portraits and audio. The installation tells the quest of creating a subjective portrait of another based on a limited social media profile, raising questions such as “What information do we include in our imagine? How does our created identity differ from reality?” The individual narratives are then curated and combined to create a collective installation. The talk will explore the project from three different perspectives: the individual stories of the participants, the process of creating a collective installation, and the use of algorithms for constructing the story and montage. By presenting the iTube project from these three perspectives, this talk will demonstrate the potential of practice-led research projects in digital storytelling and the ways in which technology can be used to create new forms of narrative expression.
Coordinated by the Participatory Art Practice ‘De Batterie’ in 2022, in collaboration with 3 Artists (Maaike Beuten, Joni De Borger, Ann Peeters) and 50 Participants.
Participating Art Houses: Cultuurcentrum Brugge, S.M.A.K. Gent, Wiels Brussels
Funding by the Flemish Government.
Ann Peeters is a creative technologist on the crossroads of technology, social impact and artistic practice. Her approach to narratives and scenario comes from a digital storytelling point of view. Her professional engagements range from teaching at the Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts (EhB) in the Multimedia & Creative Technologies programme, collaborating in social/artistic projects and, recently, Python programmer. She is involved in the international artistic and research collective SEADS where she is participating in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary and diverse collaboration and futures narratives.
- https://seads.network/project/pangea-dialogues
- https://seads.network/project/biomodd-brg13
- https://seads.network/hyperproject/metafuturism
She has attended the SRN Conference in Helsinki, Sydney, Madison Wisconsin, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Milan, Porto and was involved behind the scenes in Brussels as well.
Ann Peeters
Erasmus Brussels University
Dreamwrighting: Dreamwork for Dramatic Writing
David Crespy
This presentation will introduce professors to the Dreamwork for Dramatic Writing Workshop. In his workshop Crespy works with writers to access both the content and structure of their dreams using alpha state associative stimuli to develop surprising, new, and accessible non-linear technique.
David Crespy is a professor of Playwriting, Acting and Dramatic Literature at the University of Missouri Department of Theatre. You can learn more about Dr. Crespy and his work at https://theatre.missouri.edu/people/crespy.
His new book, Dreamwrighting: Dreamwork for Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen, will be available through Brill in November 2023 (check it out at: https://brill.com/display/title/63508).
David Crespy
University of Missouri
Lunch
12:30-2 pm
Provided in Dudley Hall
Friday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 4 - A
Writing Gender-Fluid Characters
Moderator: Ann Breidenbach
“Barbie: The Queer-Coded Conspiracy Protagonist We Needed and Never Saw Coming”
Dr. Tracy Mathewson
While some films insist that changes in the social order are beyond our control, the idea that positive change is possible and encouraged in the name of truth, justice, and the public good is precisely what fueled early conspiracy narratives. In the last 35 years, the existence of conspiracy films amidst a conspiracy culture has weakened their political force; but, unlike the rest of the (white, male-dominated) genre, female-led conspiracy films retain their political force through a blending of the personal and the political, making a strong case for contemporary conspiracy narratives that include and elevate not just more women protagonists, but protagonists with non-traditional sexualities and/or gender identities as well as those from underrepresented racial and/or class backgrounds.
Despite presenting as an overwhelmingly binary and heteronormative fantasy comedy, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) retains an ambiguity and openness that allows this closeted conspiracy film to be read as a lesbian coming out story, and/or a trans allegory that utilises teamwork and discourse as mechanisms for justice. This paradox, and the implicit queerness of Barbie and Ken makes Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie precisely the non-traditional conspiracy protagonist capable of achieving politically forceful justice.
Visual essays that accompany this paper: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8009371
Tracy Mathewson is an award-winning writer-director with a PhD in Film by Creative Practice on representations of justice and female agency in American conspiracy film. Her article “Hauntological Screenwriting: Reflections on writing Render” was published last year in the Journal of Screenwriting and employs the lens of hauntology in order to characterise the ebb and flow between the previous draft (that which is no longer) and the next (that which is still not yet). She is currently developing her debut feature CLUTCH, a cross between Days of Thunder and Million Dollar Baby on motorcycles while her short film ORTOLAN screens at film festivals across the US and UK. www.tracym.com
“Barbie: The Queer-Coded Conspiracy Protagonist We Needed and Never Saw Coming” contributes to the theme of gender and the female gaze by proposing Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) as a trans allegory and how the (queer) female gaze has the power to transform white feminism into politically forceful discourse in favour of self actualisation.
Dr Tracy Mathewson
Independent practitioner and lecturer
University of Greenwich
Screenwriting Supervisor at Leeds University.
[email protected] or [email protected]
In a League of Its Own: How 2022’s A League of Their Own series expands on the original film to provide insight into the reality for queer, Latinx and BIPOC ballplayers
MG Scott
Thirty years after Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own, we are living in an era where audiences and creatives alike are seeking more diverse and inclusive storytelling, and the writers of this new series get that. In addition to highlighting the themes that Marshall expertly tackled - sexism, camaraderie, etc. - the series explores topics the film neglected; namely, the experience of queer, Latinx and Black players. The film was groundbreaking in many ways and still stands as a wonderful celebration of feminism, especially for the time period it was made in. This current iteration builds on the progressive nature of its predecessor by digging a little deeper and giving voice to some who were left out of the conversation.
The connection I have to this story runs deep, because my sister and I - as ballplayers ourselves - greatly related to Dottie and Kit. This is one of our favorite films, so I was both excited and nervous about the proposed television series. But, once I started hearing more about the direction they were going to take it - how there was going to be a focus on queer and BIPOC characters - I became more confident that the story was in good hands.
By the time they released the trailer for the series, I had been out for about a year, and it was a journey that had been spurred on by seeing my own experience reflected in a Broadway musical, of all places. Needless to say, I had become acutely aware of the importance of having nuanced queer representation in media.
And let me tell you - this show delivers tenfold on that front. As part of this study, I will be pulling from the 2022 revival, the 1992 film, the documentary on Netflix and probably a few more sources.
MG Scott is a writer and cinephile based in the Boston area who understands the power storytelling has to create empathy. She has a BA in Film Studies from Pepperdine University, which she has put to use by writing articles for Incluvie that promote diverse and inclusive media. She also has an MFA in Screenwriting from Stephens College and the narratives she creates usually operate in the coming-of-age genre - whether that be a teen rom-com or a family adventure. When she’s not polishing a script or creating content for Incluvie, she spends her time sharing her thoughts about film, theatre and other art forms on her Instagram and YouTube channel. With this presentation, MG hopes to widen the conversation around gender and queer visibility in media.
MG Scott
Independent researcher
Friday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 4 – B
Capturing Real Women On Screen
Moderator: Clarissa Mazon Miranda
Three Sisters in a Sketchbook: Screenwriting Matters of Race, Culture, and Gender, as Censored Among Sisters.
Romana Turina
Building on the research that conducted to the editing of the Special Issue of the Journal of Screenwriting, ‘Textual perspectives: screenwriting styles, modes, and language’ (13:3). Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (Turina 2023) explores the lives of Maria, Euphemia and Antonia, born between 1930 and 1936. Escaped a violent family, the three girls defended their personhood via geo-cultural negotiations and censorship that left emotional scars and a resonance lasting till these days, with a sister living in Milan (Italy), one in Trieste (once on the Iron Curtain) and the other one, in Rovinj (once Yugoslavia and now Croatia).
The title, Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (Turina 2023) evokes the labouring of disintegration and regathering of lines that sketching entails, reflected in the screenplay, as the disintegration of lives into traces is counter balanced by the gathering into form of memory through the prosthetic aid of photos. It is in all ways, the research of ‘girls past’. Something to be found in the tension between the frame of memory and the act of framing at the hands of the camera, that comprises countless deletions of race, culture and identity by human hands and time itself, in the shape of voluntary amnesia.
Yet, the myopic eye of the screenwriter looks for answers in this female universe and in so doing opens a space of reflection. The attempt to make of the mind a pinhole camera, pointing in the direction of the past, reveals the screenwriter’s endeavour of finding clarity but also her failure. The page answers to this impossible task in revelatory gaps, where the juxtaposition of words, silence and photos comes to signal a screenplay in the making. As a result, the ‘whole’ in the lives of these women remains out of focus, and the looking is the answering.
Romana Turina holds a PhD from the University of York in Theatre, Film and Television. Her research was shortlisted for the AHRC Research Award. Currently, Romana is Head of Subject (Screenwriting) at the Arts University Bournemouth, appointed as an Associate Professor. Her research activity is focused on character development processes for short films, new forms of screenwriting, and the dialogic tension between image and text in the essay film form. Her films explore the translation of silenced life experience, and auto-ethnology in the essay film form.
Most recent publications include: Journal of Screenwriting (2022) Special Issue entitled: The New Screenplay? Emerging Styles, Modes and Languages. Editors: Romana Turina and Gabrielle Tremblay. Journal of Screenwriting (2023) Special Issue entitled: Screenwriting for Virtual Reality: Exploring Technologies, Practices, and Paradigms. Editors: Romana Turina and Kath Dooley.
Romana Turina
University Bournemouth
Perceptions of Cassie Thornton?: the translation of female blindness in ‘Perception’
Polly Ellen Goodwin
The 2017 videogame ‘Perception’, written by Amanda Gardner, is a “first-person survival horror adventure video game”[1]. A defining feature of ‘first-person’ game play is that the player sees the world through the eyes of the protagonist. In Perception, this prioritization of the visual is challenged as we experience the game as Cassie Thornton, and Cassie is blind.
This paper would examine the impact of both a female scriptwriter and a female, disabled, protagonist on a game, and explore the ‘perceptions’ this provokes from gamers. It will situate this game in the context of other depictions of female blindness within the videogame sector, and with current thinking on representation and authenticity of voice. It could also
Whilst the conference theme is ‘gender and the female gaze’, this paper would push beyond the visual to consider how scripting an audio description track could enhance the experience of the game and provide more equitable access for gamers who are blind or have low vision.
Polly Ellen Goodwin career has been devoted to widening access for people who are blind or have low vision. As a freelance audio describer (having qualified in ‘Audio Description for Screen’ at City University, London) I work across the genres for a variety of clients and audiences internationally creating audio description for broadcast television, cinemas, streaming, fashion shows and galleries. I also run the Australasian chapter of the Benefits of Audio Description in Education initiative, aimed at encouraging young consumers to become critically engaged with audio description. I am currently involved with Professor Xiaochun Zhang’s (University of Bristol) AD4Games project, exploring the potential for audio description to enhance gameplay for players who are blind or have low vision. Previous research projects have explored the potential and challenges of audio describing silent film and fashion, as well as the ethical position of the audio describer and their relation and obligation to the end user and the creator(s).
Polly Goodwin
Independent researcher, Australia
Write in the Head: Complicating Factors in Depicting Women’s Mental Health in Film and Television
Anna Weinstein
This paper will unravel the complicating factors in creating female characters who struggle with mental health. With increased public discussion about fair and accurate representation of screen characters, particularly around concerns of “authenticity,” screenwriters developing stories about mental illness can quickly find themselves focused on political correctness or “not offending” rather than diving deep into complexity of character and intricacies of story conflict. This paper presentation will discuss several concerns with developing women’s roles where mental health is an underlying source of tension, including writing in genres such as comedies or comedy-dramas, basing characters off real-life women and/or public scandals, and the trickiness of raising stakes for female characters contending with mental illness. I will examine commercially and critically acclaimed films and television series with women in leading roles, exploring the writers’ work in developing these characters as well as audience and critical responses to the characters. Finally, I will share strategies for addressing concerns about this representation, including research resources and questions to consider (and answer) during the development process. This paper draws on work from my book-in-progress, Writing Women: Creating Complex Female Characters for Film and Television (Routledge).
Anna Weinstein serves as secretary for SRN. An Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, she is co-chair of the Film Area for the Popular Culture Association (PCA) and founding editor of the PERFORM: Succeeding as a Creative Professional book series (Routledge) and the forthcoming SCREEN STORYTELLERS book series (Bloomsbury Academic), which will feature volumes dedicated to the study of significant or underrepresented screenwriters’ works. Anna frequently publishes interviews with women filmmakers in Film International (Intellect) and is currently developing several television series, including a mystery thriller with producer/director Antonia Bogdanovich.
Anna Weinstein
Kennesaw State University, US
Friday 2-3:30 pm
Panel 4 - C
Representing Women Fighting Crime
Moderator: Paola Russo
Circeo: The female gaze on crime and women history
Laura Cotta Ramosino
September 29, 1975. Two teenage girls from the outskirts of Rome are invited by three young men from bourgeois families to a party at a beach villa. On the morning of October 1, newspapers, televisions, and radios all lead with the same news report: two girls have been found in the trunk of a car in Rome, naked, wrapped in blankets and drenched in blood. Rosaria is dead, but Donatella is alive. "The Circeo Massacre” shocks Italy. The trial is reported on daily in national newspapers.
Over the decades, the Circeo massacre has catalyzed crime news, but also political debate and artistic representation, both in cinema and TV.
I will devote my intervention to a recent tv show, Circeo, that puts front and center the survivor and the subsequent court case and where I, as creative producer, was involved in all the main artistic choices. I will focus specially on the female gaze applied to the characters’ treatment, to crime and social history, where a personal drama that immediately takes on a social and political dimension.
The script was written by three female writers and staged by a male director. How does the female gaze play? It has to do with the representation of violence itself (avoiding pornography that turns victims into passive bodies) but also and above with the representation of the protagonist, who as a victim becomes the catalyst of the demands of various groups, a body and an individuality on which a legal but also ideological battle is fought. What does it mean to be a victim and what does it mean to be a symbol? What are the social impositions on these two roles? And how this is translated in terms of writing strategies and visual choices?
Laura Cotta Ramosino
Laura Cotta Ramosino
Italian producer
“Wipe that Lipstick Off Your Mouth”: Della Street as the American Woman in Perry Mason on Film, Screen & in Print
Lizzie Germann
Perry Mason was an extraordinarily popular American legal drama that ran from 1957-1966 on CBS. Weekly, fans would tune in to watch L.A. defense lawyer Mason (Raymond Burr) use every tactic in the book to prove his client’s innocence, always aided by his investigator Paul Drake (William Hopper) and his secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale). The Perry Mason TV show was based on a series of novels written by Erle Stanley Gardner, beginning with Perry’s first appearance in The Case of the Velvet Claws 1933 and continuing through 1973 after Gardner’s death. Most recently, in 2020 HBO aired the Perry Mason reboot, a recontextualizing of the characters into the Los Angels of the 1930’s, when Gardener’s novels take place. Through the many adaptations of Gardner’s work, the symbiotic relationship between Perry and his secretary Della remains ever-present – even if the character of Della has changed dramatically due to changes in prevailing attitudes towards women’s roles in American society and the workforce, as well as changing mores surrounding women’s sexuality.
This paper focuses on the depictions of the character of Della Street in the Gardner novels, the original Perry Mason series and HBO’s 2020 Perry Mason reboot. While much has been made of the character of Perry Mason, Della Street — Mason's “quasi-wife”/sometimes-girlfriend/always-secretary — has been marginalized by both academics studying the popularity of the series and by scholars of 20th century television. The character of Della can be used to analyze to the decisions screenwriters must make when adapting written works; she can also be used as an object which reflects and/or rejects prevailing attitudes about women during the time(s) the adaptations were created.
Using analysis of Della’s depictions in the Perry Mason novels, original series scripts and scripts from the HBO reboot, as well as research into 20th century television and 21st century prestige drama, this paper will analyze how the varying depictions of Della Street reflect changing American attitudes towards women in the 20th and 21st centuries. Della has primarily been developed by and written by men — from Gardner himself to the all-male writing staff of the CBS series to the male partnerships which have helmed HBO’s reboot. However, the intimate influence of women upon these various creators & screenwriters, notably Gail Patrick Jackson’s partnership in Paisano Productions alongside Gardner and her husband Cornwall Jackson, shaped the molds from which Della was created.
Lizzie Germann is an Assistant Professor at Stephens College where she teaches in the Digital Filmmaking program. She is a writer & director of short films which have played in festivals across the United States. Her research interests include American popular culture & television studies, especially so-called “cult” TV shows and crime & legal dramas in American television.
Lizzie Germann
Stephens College
[email protected]
Who were ‘the real’ heroes or heroines in the true crime series The Investigation?
Heidi Philipsen
The Investigation (2020) is a true crime series based on an unusual case which took place in Denmark (2017). The Danish inventor, Peter Madsen, killed the Swedish journalist Kim Wall in his submarine. In 2018 he was sentenced after a complicated police investigation. A colleague and I have written a book with focus on the production and genre of The Investigation (Philipsen & Pilegaard 2023). In my presentation, however, the key question is: Who were ‘the real’ heroes or heroines of this series? How were the female characters staged? And how did the media covering of the case influence viewership?
True crimes (and texts surrounding them) often relate to sensationalism about the killing. The Investigation did the opposite. The bloody details about Wall’s body were deemphasised. The camera avoided the body parts, and the sexual motive was discussed in professional and ethical ways. Where true crimes often criticize justice systems and policework, The Investigation did the opposite again. It complimented the police-officers as heroes/heroines who worked tirelessly, and tributed to the character, Maibritt, for her position in the policework.
Wall’s ideals as a female journalist were emphasized - narrated through her parents. She was discretely highlighted as an important part in the story – without being present. Her character was not depicted as careless for going into the submarine. On the contrary, she was staged as a brave woman through the eyes of her parents. The Investigation was even dedicated to the memory of her, and the epilogue addressed ‘the Kim Wall Memorial Fund’ an organization funding female journalists. Jens Møller, head of the investigation, was the protagonist of the story. Whereas the rest all served as helping characters. But were they - or perhaps Wall - the ‘real’ heroes of this story? This question will be addressed in my presentation.
Heidi Hilarius-Kalkau Philipsen (1971) is Associate Professor at Media Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Besides this she is head of the education called ‘Screen Play Development’. Her field of research has always been production studies with a focus on creative storytelling processes. Her scientific heart is beating for talented practitioners who carry out stories through film or series. She is also a storyteller herself. On her publication list is both scientific books on media, but also a novel, and a short film. Her latest media book is The Narrative Investigation – Serial writing, Production, Genre & Viewership (written together with Nathali Pilegaard, 2023).
Heidi Philipsen
University of Southern Denmark
Inaugural Screenwriting Research Lecture
Tom Stempel, author of Framework
4-5 pm
Windsor Auditorium
Annual General Meeting (AGM)
5-6 pm
Open to all
Book Awards Announced
Conference Dinner
6:30-8:30 pm
Library Penthouse
Saturday
8-9 am
Continental Breakfast
Keynote #4
9-10:30 am
Macklanburg Playhouse
Live recording of The Screenwriting Life podcast w/ Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna
(They will take pitches and give feedback!)
Break
10:30-11:15 am
Saturday 11:15 am-12:45 pm
Panel 5 - A
Silent Women Said a Lot
Moderator: Clarissa Mazon Miranda
Australian Lottie Lyall and the 1916 scenario for The Mutiny of The Bounty
Simon Weaving
Lottie Lyell (born Charlotte Cox) was an Australian motion picture producer and silent film actress who made a successful transition from theatre to the screen in the early 1900s. Together with her partner, Raymond Longford, she was involved in the production of more than 30 silent movies, as actress, writer, director, editor and/or producer. She was best known to the Australian public for her portrayal of strong leading women in movies like The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole (1911), The Church and The Woman (1917) and The Sentimental Bloke (1918). In many of her movies she carries out her own stunts, diving off cliffs into the sea and riding horses to escape the forces of oppression. Off screen she was involved in all aspects of production and, as the competitive forces of the newly emerging film industry consolidated in Australia, she and Longford formed Longford-Lyell Productions in an unsuccessful attempt to remain a vibrant independent filmmaking enterprise. When she died of tuberculosis in 1925 at the age of 35, she left behind a legacy that went largely unrecognized.
In 1916, Lyell wrote the screenplay for the first version of The Mutiny of the Bounty, and, although the one-hour film is lost, a copy of the scenario – registered for copyright purposes - survives.
Typed using a red and blue ribbon, the 13-page script is an extraordinary document, demonstrating the screenwriter’s skill at balancing historical fact, visual storytelling, and character-based emotion, all at a time when the “rules” for formatting ‘photoplays’ were in flux.
Using a deep analysis of structure, content and form, this paper reveals Lyell’s careful organisation of plot, the various techniques used to bring the action to life, as well as the creative idiosyncrasies that enhance a reading of the document and highlight significant moments for production purposes.
This paper also explores documented responses to the movie, drawing upon reviews in both the Australian and English print media at the time of its release, demonstrating the success of the movie and its careful attempt to maintain historical accuracy – unlike later movie versions of the same story.
Simon Weaving is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle where he teaches Screenwriting and media production. He has research interests in screenwriting, narrative structure and the changing nature of distribution and exhibition in the cinema industry. He has recently worked with industry partners across Australia to understand the cinema-going experience, particularly for the 18-25-year-old age group. Simon’s PhD explored the post-war Australian film industry and the way that genre is used by screenwriters.
Simon Weaving
University of Newcastle
FOUNDING AUTHORS: THE CRAFT OF FEMALE SCREENWRITERS IN AMERICAN SILENT CINEMA
Gabriel Paletz
The SRN conference theme of the female gaze is one arrow in the quiver of the screenwriter who aims at female-focused stories. This presentation reveals the range of screenwriting strategies for female- centered scripts, that I discovered by curating the first series dedicated to great women screenwriters of Hollywood silent films, at the world’s largest silent film festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.
This series illustrated the many aspects of the artistry of early screenwriters Anita Loos, Dorothy Yost, Clara Beranger, Beulah Marie Dix, Sada Cowan, Grace Cunard and Agnes Christine Johnston among others. Through the films researched and restored for the program, I learned how these screenwriters composed female-centered stories in the first decades of film, using the female gaze and:
Female voice—speaking both through Loos’s witty intertitles and the point of view of a race horse in an acclaimed film by Yost;
Female action—depicting both the labors of and liberation from domesticity, in pictures by Beranger, Cowan and Dix;
Female adventure—of a heroine luxuriating in her boudoir, then masterminding sensational crimes in serial episodes written by and starring “The Master Pen” Cunard, and
Female craft—how Agnes Christine Johnston and her fellow scenarists attuned their writing to the arts of filmmaking, from descriptions of acrobatic movements in physical comedy, to subtle changes of expression in dramatic close-ups. These and other examples from my original research show the essential roles of these female screenwriters in shaping the craft of screenwriting.
Women screenwriters may now be a minority within a minority in the film community. But in the silent era, they made up the majority of screen authors. This presentation recovers their inestimable contributions to both the practices and possibilities of the screenplay.
Gabriel M. Paletz. In contributing to the SRN conference theme, in 2021 Gabriel M. Paletz curated the first series dedicated to the great female screenwriters of silent cinema at the world’s largest silent film festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy. He is a film teacher, critic, writer and programmer currently based at the Prague Film School in Prague, Czech Republic, where he continues to make discoveries about screenwriting in instructing young filmmakers from five continents in the craft. He has published in Variety, Moviemaker, Filmmaker, the magazine of the Cinémathèque Française, The Journal of Media Practice and many other popular and scholarly journals. He is currently completing a book on the craft of screenwriting for young filmmakers.
Gabriel Paletz
Prague Film School of Prague
Saturday
Panel 5 - B
The ‘F’ Word = Feminism On Film
Moderator: Paolo Russo
Niki shoots (moving) pictures: Niki de Saint Phalle's Autofictional Radical Feminist Films
Ronald Geerts
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author, is considered one of the most powerful feminist artists. Gloria Steinem said about de Saint Phalle, "That is the first free woman I have ever seen in real life. I want to be just like her".
De Saint Phalle's voluminous, larger-than-life sculptures, known as ‘nanas’, are still popular today. They seem to express a zest for life and female resilience. However, an important part of her art is also aggressive in its attacks on patriarchy and dark, featuring serpents and skulls.
De Saint Phalle herself explains that her art is political because it is personal: “The result is feminine since I am a woman […] With my work I express exactly the problems of women today.” Although de Saint Phalle is best known for her sculptural work, my paper will focus on her filmic work. It aims to explore how the process of recasting and rewriting personal and traumatic experiences in her films constructs a representation of reality through a ‘female gaze’. De Saint Phalle consciously developed these narrative and dramaturgical strategies, as evidenced in her biographical texts such as Traces (1999) and My Secret (1994). In these works she reveals that films like Daddy (1971) or The Traveling Companion (1977) are rooted in the artist's traumatic past. Moreover, she develops a reflection on how to tell these stories and even refers to films she saw. Seen in this light Niki de Saint Phalle's narrative art falls under the label of ‘autofiction’ (Dubrovsky). My paper focuses on how De Saint Phalle’s filmic storytelling provides keys to frame her oeuvre, and, more specifically her feminist and social commitment.
Scripts and films will serve as a guide to map the radical narrative and dramaturgical strategies used to turn 'personal reality’ into 'political autofiction’ and how these films are pioneers of the 'female gaze'.
Ronald Geerts combines theory and practice in teaching theatre, dramaturgy and storytelling courses at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and screenwriting history and theory at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). His research interests and publications stretch from contemporary Flemish theatre in its international context to the use of narrative and dramaturgical strategies in theatre, film and television. Recent publications: co-guest editor of a special issue of Documenta on theatrical dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven (2022) and of the special issue on Seriality of JLIC Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (2023); “The plural protagonist” in The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (Davis, Russo, Tieber eds. forthcoming).
Ronald Geerts
Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Université Libre de Bruxelles
The Films of Anna Muylaert and How they Have Shaped Brazilian Cinema
Julia Camara
An in depth look at the films of Brazilian filmmaker Anna Muylaert, writer and director of the award winning The Second Mother (2015). The film won the Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize for Acting (Regina Casé) at the Sundance Film Festival. The Second Mother was Brazil’s entry in the foreign-language film Academy Awards category. The Second Mother’s critical acclaim reflects the country’s moment in history in terms of politics and the change legislations have brought to the lives of domestic workers.
Muylaert has written and directed many acclaimed films such as Don’t Call Me Son (2016) winner of the Berlin Film Festival Männer Magazine Readers' Jury Award and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2009), winner of the Cinema Brazil Grand Prize for best picture.
Muylaert is one of the few women in her field. Her work captures the female gaze and has opened up the eyes of the world to Brazilian cinema.
Julia Camara is an award-winning Brazilian screenwriter/filmmaker. Camara holds a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema from Columbia College-Hollywood and a Master of Fine Arts degree in TV & Screenwriting from Stephens College. Camara won a Telly Award for the sci-fi found footage feature Occupants (aka Alterverse). Camara’s feature directorial debut In Transit, won Best Experimental Film at four different festivals. Camara’s other writing credits include Area Q and Open Road. Her latest film is Stronghold, an indie thriller scheduled for release in early 2023. Camara’s eBook That’s What She Wrote, a collection of essays about filmmaking and interviews with women screenwriters is available on Amazon.
Julia Camera
Independent Filmmaker
A long and winding road to women's stories on the example of Estonian cinema.
Kristiina Davidjants
Estonia's film history goes back over a hundred years and contains many films from the Republic of Estonia (1918-1939), the Soviet era (1940-1991), and the present day. If in the years until the Soviet occupation, the theme of "damsels in distress" prevailed on the cinema screens and there were practically no women among the filmmakers, the Soviet era showed us a slight change in themes. However, the women's stories and female filmmakers were still almost non-existent. There are several reasons, one of them being the small country that was dependable on the will of Moscow officials, as well as the fact that in a country that was supposed to be the most equal of equals, there were perhaps a few female screenwriters, but very few female directors. Nevertheless, there was one bright star in Estonia, Leida Laius, whose work we will discuss in the presentation.
A completely new era came with the collapse of the Soviet Union when the state-supported cinema industry as such ceased to exist. Thirty years later, we can state that Estonia has become one of those countries where, in terms of gender equality, there is no lack of women as filmmakers, and women's stories are strongly represented on the screen. As an example of current trends, we will discuss the 2023 documentary "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood," which competed at Sundance and won the Directing Award at the World Cinema Documentary Competition.
Kristiina Davidjants is foremostly an Estonian director and producer, but her heart also belongs to film history. As a result, she has written a book, "100 Years of Estonian Cinema" (2019). In addition, she is currently a film history lecturer at the Estonian Art Academy and, last but not least, MFA candidate in TV and Screenwriting at Stephens College.
Kristiina Davidjants
Estonian Art Academy
[email protected]
Saturday
Panel 5 - C
Screenwriting As Activism
Moderator: Jan Cernik
Sustainable Screenplay Development through Storyworld-Building
Heidi Philipsen
In Denmark we see a growing research interest in both sustainable filmmaking and the use of storyworlds within the field of media-studies. Little attention has though been paid to the possibilities of using world-building in screenplay development as a tool towards generating more sustainable film-production processes. My presentation offers findings from a project called “Sustainable sGreenplay”. This contributes to develop knowledge of green film-production processes and to design and test an app with help from screenwriters and students. Additionally, we will also conduct a production study of a practical filmmaking-process. The purpose of our app will be to calculate the CO2 impact of production standards and illustrate the potential CO2 savings from choosing alternative options.
My research question is: How can green production dogmas, world-building and the described app help to carry out sustainable decision-making in the screenwriting? Bringing awareness of climate impact at this level can be a step toward reducing the film-industry’s CO2, as screenwriters ‘world-build’ the fundamental settings for a story that will help to define the entire production and its environmental footprints. Transportation plays a significant role in this industry (Viegand & Maagøe 2021). However, this could be reduced significantly, if an increased focus on climate friendly transport options and sets became more standardized.
An app is of course only a small contribution and the production culture as a whole need to change to adopt more green solutions. Many practitioners fear that green dogmas and requirements limit their creativity. My hypothesis, however, is that such dogmas have the potential to both help address the climate impact and offer new opportunities for creative diversity and expression. Existing research underlines this (Philipsen & Pilegaard 2023). But how will the filmmakers embrace the mindset? Are they ready for a green game-changer? At the conference I will present project findings.
Heidi Hilarius-Kalkau Philipsen (1971) is Associate Professor at Media Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Besides this she is head of the education called ‘Screen Play Development’. Her field of research has always been production studies with a focus on creative storytelling processes. Her scientific heart is beating for talented practitioners who carry out stories through film or series. She is also a storyteller herself. On her publication list is both scientific books on media, but also a novel, and a short film. Her latest media book is The Narrative Investigation – Serial writing, Production, Genre & Viewership (written together with Nathali Pilegaard, 2023).
Heidi Philipsen
University of Southern Denmark
Cinematic Feminine Empowerment: Viewing Female Vulnerability as Power to Shame and Punish Perpetrators
John McHale and Lee Anne Hale
This paper critically analyzes the film Promising Young Woman (2021) using a dramaturgical approach as a critical lens augmented by analytic explication of structural aspects. This analysis reveals the film explores how appearing as a potential victim was used by the protagonist to wield her presence to punish potential perpetrators. Initially, a review of related methodological work and research on films in this subgenre will inform the outlined methodological approach. We stress how we read the screenplay and the work of the screenwriter. In addition, the aural and visual text of the film will be cinematically and textually deconstructed. This paper will reveal the inherent critical assessment of contemporary society inherent in the story and will emphasize the power of cinematic art to encapsulate and represent dehumanizing misogyny, resulting emotional pain and rage, and how the potential for being viewed as a potential victim empowered the protagonist.
John Patrick McHale is a Professor of Media Writing at Illinois State University. McHale has degrees in communication, political science, and history. McHale earned professional certification in film production from New York University and his Ph.D. from University of Missouri - Columbia. McHale has won numerous awards for cinema writing, directing, and producing.
Lee Anne Hale is a Lecturer at Illinois State University with specialties in Gender and Communication, Communication Theory, and Coaching Students for Success and Retention. Hale earned Bachelor’s degrees in Communication and Sociology from Bradley University and a Master’s degree in Communication form Illinois State University. Hale has won numerous teaching awards.
John McHale
Illinois State University
Can Third Cinema Emerge from Within the Hollywood System?
Rex Obano
Third Cinema is a Latin American film movement that started in the 1960s – 70s which decries neo-colonialism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money. Exponents of Third Cinema regard films that ascribe to the Hollywood system – mainly films made in the United States and the United Kingdom - as films that function to maintain a particular kind of culture rather than to change or move it forward. They view this kind of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression rather than the collective. Third Cinema has influenced film makers and screenwriters as varied as Sganzerla and Rocha in Brazil, Leduc in Mexico, Dehlavi in Pakistan and Mambéty and Sembène in Senegal – all who worked to subvert the Hollywood system from the outside.
Debate in the field of film theory has been dominated by the paradox of both accommodation and protest. This paper examines whether Third Cinema can exist within the Hollywood system. I will look at the work of two filmmakers who were influenced by Third Cinema and who attempted to work within the Hollywood system - the Black Audio Film Collective in the United Kingdom and the work of the filmmaker Charles Burnett in the United States. Both examples underline the pitfalls of working within the Hollywood system. My paper therefore will argue that there is a ‘Fourth Cinema’ that uniquely and specifically can emerge from within the Hollywood system.
Rex Obano is a Teaching Fellow in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, University of London where he is also studying for a PhD. His research focusses on cultural neo-colonialism and its effect on black-British screenwriting. As a writer he has written for the stage, television, radio and film. His theatre includes Slaves (Theatre 503) and The Door Never Closes (Almeida Theatre). His radio includes Someone’s Making A Killing In Nigeria; Burned To Nothing; Oil on Water; An African In Greenland; Faith, Hope and Glory – Series 1-7 (BBC Radio 4) and Lover’s Rock; As Innocent As You Can Get, City College and The Moors of England (BBC Radio 3). Rex has been in writers’ rooms for television series on both sides of the Atlantic. Rex has a feature film and in development with Pencil Trick Productions and is a writer for the television series Rastamouse (CBBC), Black Tudors (Brit-Box/Silverprint) and Shakespeare and Hathaway (BBC).
Rex Obano
Royal Holloway, University of London
[email protected]
Lunch
12:45-2:45 pm
(on your own in town)
Saturday 2:45-4:15 pm
Panel 6 - A
Understanding the Narrative
Moderator: Kris Somerville
The Little Mermaid – a video essay about the (un)importance of finding a prince
Ruth Mellaerts
This video essay starts from a fascination with the figure of the mermaid. It explores how The Little Mermaid fairy tale has shaped me as a screenwriter, but also as a young woman. To what extent does this story mirror for young girls the importance of finding a prince? Or even better, the importance of being found by a prince? Is the little mermaid more than a beautiful princess who was silenced? The video essay will juxtapose Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid from 1837 with the mermaid from the 1989 Disney classic, comparing it to Hayao Miyazaki's 2008 Ponyo. Then we jump to the present with Disney's live-action adaptation (2023).
How is the Little Mermaid depicted in the original story and its adaptations, across cultures and time periods? What values and themes become central to these stories, and what do they tell us about what it means to be a heroine?
This will be further explored by also looking at the analyses of scholar Maria Tatar, as well as the work of author Gail Carriger who charts the Heroine's Journey. To what extent is a so-called "Heroine's Journey" different from a Hero's Journey? Why is it that so many female characters in fairy tales lose their tongues or language? And what happens when instead of exclusively waiting for a prince to find them, these heroines take the lead in their own story?
Ruth Mellaerts works as a screenwriter, researcher and teacher at the Brussels film school RITCS. She has written scenarios for short films, television series and published a book of short stories. Her research focuses on contemporary dramaturgy, with a particular attention to diversity and female voices.
Ruth Mellaerts
RITCS School of Arts Brussels
International Script Consulting: Cultural Enhancement or Cultural Imperialism?
Pavel Jech
A brief discussion on the phenomenon of international development labs and the coproduction process.
Filmmakers in international labs are encouraged to develop personal stories for films that reflect their culture and aspirations. However, the development process raises questions. To what extent do the demands of the international market and the inherent (predominantly Western) biases of the script editor's dramaturgy alter or interfere with the filmmaker's vision and cultural integrity? The presenter will provide a brief historical overview and firsthand observations from his participation in central Europe, the European Union, and worldwide development labs and projects.
Pavel Jech is a professor of screenwriting and associate dean for academic affairs at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in California. Previously, he served two terms as dean of The Film and Television School of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU).
A graduate of both FAMU and Columbia, Pavel has also mentored in numerous international workshops, including Sundance International Labs, Berlinale Talents, The Mediterranean Film Institute, the Asia Pacific Screen Lab, and the Midpoint: Central Europe Script Institute which he co-founded. Pavel has worked internationally as a screenwriter and script doctor, earning credits on films produced in over a dozen countries, including several nationally nominated films for the Oscars and entries into Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, and most recently, a project premiering at the Busan International Film Festival next month.
Pavel Jech
Chapman University
The Female Bind in Film Comedy
Deborah Klika
Analysing the nature of the midpoint (MP) in film comedies, this paper posits that plots dealing with a discordant relationship necessitate that the MP initiate a ‘bind’ for the main character/s between a ‘want’ (often a tangible goal) and their ‘need’ (flaws they must face).
By attempting to master the bind, rather than confront their need, the character suffers what I term ‘cognisant dissonance,’ in that they become aware of the incongruity, yet lack the cognition to confront the issue, underpinning the comic tension in the second half of Act Two in a feature comedy film.
This paper will explore the nature of the bind in female protagonists in film comedy and how that might differ from the bind that the male characters confront. To that end I will use The Devil Wears Prada (Wr. Aline Brosh McKenna, Dir. David Frankel, 2006), Bridesmaids (Wrs. Annie Mumolo, Kristen Wiig, Dir. Paul Feig, 2011), The Apartment (Wrs. Billy wilder, I.A.L. Diamond, Dir. Billy Wilder, 1960) along with Tootsie (Wrs. Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal, Dir. Sydney Pollack, 1982) as case studies analysing the behaviour of the protagonists in each film as they respond to the MP - attempting to maintain both their need and want. I posit that such a bind creates comic tension in the second half of the second act. I will touch on The Proposal (Wr. Peter Chiarelli, Dir. Anne Fletcher, 2009) as a film where both protagonists, with different representing genders, are each caught in a bind at the MP and how they each deal with the resulting tension. This paper responds to the theme of the conference in its analysis of the female character caught in a bind, and how the character then responds to its effects.
Deborah Klika is an associate Professor Film and Television, School of Stage and Screen.
Deborah Klika
University of Greenwich, London, UK.
Saturday
Panel 6 - B
Narrative Strategies And Frameworks
Moderator: Rosanne Welch
“Promising Young Women — ‘constant' characters who change the world”
Anthony Mullins
ON VIDEO
As I have discussed elsewhere (Mullins 2022), a popular tenet of screenwriting education and craft is the concept of ‘emotional transformation’, often described as a character’s ‘arc’. Within this framework it is asserted that the structure of most, if not all, ’successful’ screen stories are shaped around the protagonist dramatically changing their inner desires, beliefs or values in order to resolve the central conflict of the story. However, a great many commercially and critically successful screen stories feature protagonists who do not emotionally transform and who, instead, hold fast, for better or worse, to their existing desires, beliefs and values in order to deal with the central conflict of the story — Erin Brockovich, Moana, A Fantastic Woman, Alien, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Hurt Locker, Winter’s Bone, Uncut Gems.
I call these types of protagonists emotionally ‘constant’ characters in that they resist the emotional change typically demanded by dominant screenwriting theory and, instead, push back against or seek to change the inter-personal and/or social world around them.
In this paper, I will argue that constant characters have the potential to not only challenge traditional ways of structuring a screen story but also to challenge the themes of conformity that have come to dominate Anglo-American ways of understanding the story, particularly with the assumption that there must always be an unconscious ‘need’ in the protagonist or a ‘lack’ or ‘flaw’ in their worldview.
To demonstrate these ideas, I will present three case studies featuring female protagonists who reject the need for emotional change and, instead, seek to change the world around them. In other words, they are emotionally ‘constant’ characters. The case studies I will explore are Moana, Promising Young Woman and Don’t Look Up.
Anthony Mullins is a BAFTA and AWGIE award-winning screenwriter and educator. He has a Doctorate of Visual Arts from Queensland College of Arts where he teaches and is a member of the school’s Industry Advisory Council. His book Beyond the Hero’s Journey (2021) is published by New South Publishing in Australia and Old Castle Books internationally (US, UK, and China). Anthony’s first short film (STOP, 2000), was nominated for the Palmes d’Or for short films at the Cannes Film Festival and one of his first TV assignments was writing and directing two spin-off web series for the US television series LOST, one of which won a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Interactive Television (Dharma Wants You, 2009). His work on Spooks Interactive (2008) won two BAFTAs for Interactive Television. Anthony was the development executive and script editor on Safe Harbour which won the 2019 International Emmy Award for Best Mini-Series.
Anthony Mullins
Griffith Film School
Saturday
Panel 6 - C
Is There a Creative Process Particular To Women?
Moderator: Ann Breidenbach
Female screenwriters within writing partnerships: Case study on Joan Didion’s work
Laura Kirk
Much has been written about Joan Didion with little focus on her screenwriting. This has to do more with the spaces women were allowed to create and less with her voice as a screenwriter. Ahead of her time, the power of her work was a painstakingly realistic depiction of women. Didion famously rejected the women’s movement and preferred to be alone to protect her craft. Trained as a journalist, her method of dispassionate observation served her work. The feminist space she carved out for herself sustained her career. The writing partnership with her husband, John Gregory Dunne began with The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and the advent of gritty realistic independent film shooting on location. In this film and others, the topic of abortion is raised and accurately portrayed. The following is a bizarre film based on the bestselling novel Such Good Friends (1971) The relationship with Otto Preminger foreshadows later troubles with producers and directors. Play It As It Lays (1972) based on Didion’s novel again tackles abortion, the treatment of women in Hollywood, and sexuality. All topics are considered edgy yet fully part of life. A Star is Born (1976) went through considerable change under the helm of Barbara Streisand and Jon Peters. Finally, Up Close and Personal (1996) is the famously sugarcoated version of the Jessica Savitch story which disallowed truthful layered characters and historically accurate story. If the industry had evolved more Didion’s talent would have been more celebrated, and she would have been better known for screenwriting. Telling women’s stories in the framework of an evergreen disadvantaged political climate by taking unpopular stands remains vital.
Laura Kirk
Laura Kirk https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1278-6867 is an award-winning filmmaker with credits as an actor, producer and writer: www.imdb.me/laurakirk Laura is a co-founder of the mentoring group “Women of Lawrence Film” and is an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Kansas, Department of Theatre and Dance, Courtesy Faculty Department of Film and Media Studies. Current Screenplay: Lending Creedence: The Untold Story of Marie Porter. Research stays focused on telling women’s stories. Kirk currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Laura Kirk
University of Kansas
Writing the cine-poetic: an analysis of screenwriting technique in the work of Lynne Ramsay- Video-essay
Chris Neilan
Lynne Ramsay has been called one of the most distinctive British filmmakers of her generation, yet despite her renown as a director she rarely receives attention nor credit for her mastery of screenwriting technique. Her early short films demonstrated superlative skills in characterisation, emotional intelligence and psychological realism, which she continued with her masterfully minimalist debut feature Ratcatcher (1999), crafting screen works with the verisimilitude of Ken Loach or the Dardennes brothers shot through with a bleak lyrical beauty.
What makes her screenwriting particularly interesting, however, is how in each of her subsequent films she has demonstrated the will and the skill to move beyond the restrictive doxa laid out by screenwriting manuals and recited ad nauseum within screen industries, subverting key conventions in striking ways, and demonstrating a broad palette of technique. In Morvern Callar (2002), she presented the rarest of things: a female ‘defection protagonist’ (Menne, 2019), a lost wanderer lacking the wilfulness of the typical Hollywood protagonist, evoking Agnes Varda’s Vagabond (1985) and the counter-culture approaches of the Hollywood New Wave. In We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) she crafted a complex modular narrative, interweaving three separate discontiguous timelines in the protagonist’s life, reflecting the fracturing of the psyche in the aftermath of severe trauma, and presenting a ‘puzzle film’ (Buckland, 2009) narrative every bit as skilfully crafted as Memento (2000) or Mulholland Drive (2001) but with a deeper emotional resonance. In her most recent feature, You Were Never Really Here (2017), she presents a Travis Bickle-esque changeless protagonist, locked inside his own emotional and psychological struggles, who does not change but is ‘revealed’ (Schrader, 2002), whilst managing still to drive a suspense-laden crime narrative.
This video-essay will analyse the screenwriting techniques that Ramsay has used throughout her career to create her distinctive cinema, revealing the conventions she has sought to challenge and the manner in which she has challenged them.
Chris Neilan is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, and a Lecturer in Screenwriting and Development at Edinburgh Napier University. He has published in Film International and the Journal of Screenwriting, has upcoming work in The Bloomsbury Handbook of International Screenwriting Theory and is developing his own screenwriting anti-handbook, Unconventional Screenwriting, for publication with Bloomsbury. His fiction is widely published and his films have played at festivals across four continents, winning several awards.
Chris Neilan
Edinburgh Napier University
Break
4:15-4:30 pm
Saturday Wrap-up Session
4:30-5:30 pm
Windsor Auditorium
Saturday
5:30-7 pm
Dinner
Saturday
7-9 pm
Inside Out screening
Ragtag Cinema
Q&A with screenwriter Meg LeFauve
(off campus - extra ticket required)
Sunday September 24
Safe Travels Home
See you next year!
September 12-14, 202
Palacký University Olomouc
Křížkovského 511/8
779 00 Olomouc
Czechia
Questions about next year's conference? Email our future host:
Jan Cernik