The San Francisco Film Society announced today the winner and honorable mention of the Hearst Screenwriting Grant. This grant, supported by a gift from William R. Hearst III, is a major component of the SFFS screenwriting initiative and the newest element of the Film Society’s rapidly expanding Filmmaker Services program. The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions are Rod Armstrong, programmer at the Film Society; Hannah Eaves, director of new media at Link TV and writer; George Rush, entertainment lawyer and producer; and Michele Turnure-Salleo, the Film Society’s Filmmaker Services manager. They awarded the Hearst Grant to Mora Stephens for her script Made in the USA, saying, “It was a very difficult decision, but we are excited by Mora Stephens’s Made in the USA and the possibility of combining documentary and narrative elements into an international, socially relevant film.”

The Hearst Screenwriting Grant of $15,000 is given to a mid-career screenwriter who has been a practicing writer for at least five years and who has previously written a minimum of one feature screenplay. The grant is open to writers residing in the United States whose project expresses both a unique personal perspective and an artistic approach to the subject. Priority is given to writers whose previous short or feature screenplays have been produced as an independent film.

WINNER
Mora Stephens cowrote and directed the feature film Conventioneers, which won the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards’ John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature (Made for Under $500,000) as well as the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Florida Film Festival. The film premiered at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, had its international premiere in Korea at the Pusan International Film Festival and was released by Cinema Libre Studio in 2007. An alumna of NYU’s graduate film program and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Stephens has written numerous short films and plays including Breaking Bread, which aired on Showtime in September 2002 as part of Reflections from Ground Zero. She cowrote the independent feature Devil’s Pond, directed by Joel Viertel and starring Kip Pardue and Tara Reid, released by Artisan in 2003. She has been the recipient of a number of prestigious screenwriting awards and filmmaker labs including the Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access program, Film Independent’s Directors Lab, the Los Angeles Film Festival/Filmmaker Magazine’s Fast Track program, the Asian Cinevision Screenplay Contest and the Korean Film Council Filmmakers’ Development Lab. At the 2006 Pusan International Film Festival, Stephens was awarded the PPP/Overseas Koreans Foundation Filmmaker Fund prize for her screenplay The 38th Parallel. She currently is developing her screenplay Homeland with producer Heather Rae (Frozen River). Stephens is a cofounder of Hyphenate Films. hyphenatefilms.com

Made in the USA
Following the funeral of his high-school girlfriend, a young American man sets out on an odyssey to Shanghai, Shenzhen and finally Saipan to find and rescue his daughter.

HONORABLE MENTION
Caveh Zahedi is an autobiographical writer/actor/director who combines both dramatic and documentary elements in his work. His films have won awards at major international film festivals and have been distributed theatrically, released on DVD and broadcast on television. He is a Guggenheim recipient, a Rome Prize Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow and a winner of the 2005 Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.” Zahedi has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Film Institute, the Sundance Documentary Fund, Creative Capital and the San Francisco Arts Commission. His films include A Little Stiff (1991), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), In the Bathtub of the World (2001) and I Am A Sex Addict (2005). He also has appeared as an actor in Waking Life (2001), A Sign from God (2000), Money Buys Happiness (1999) and Citizen Ruth (1996). cavehzahedi.com

The Jerusalem Syndrome
The Jerusalem Syndrome is a metaphysical thriller about a writer who starts having inexplicable visions, which lead him to suspect that he may have been the apostle Judas in a past life. He begins a quest to discover his hidden identity.

For more information: Hearst Screenwriting Grant.

San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to celebrating film and the moving image in all its glorious forms. SFFS year-round programs and events are concentrated in four core areas: Celebrating Internationalism, Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Digital Media. The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; presents the longest-running film festival in the Americas, the SF International (April 22–May 6, 2010); publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, featuring broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film and media; annually reaches more than 8,000 students ages 6–18 with its acclaimed media literacy programs; and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through SFFS Filmmaker Services including FilmHouse Residencies, Fiscal Sponsorship, the Herbert Family Filmmaking Grants, Djerassi Residency Award/San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Fellowship, SFFS Film Arts Forums and professional-level filmmaker classes.

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