San Francisco Film Society announced today the winner and honorable mention of the Djerassi Residency Award/San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Fellowship given to encourage the career of an emerging or established screenwriter. The fellowship is part of the Film Society’s expanded suite of filmmaker services programs and activities designed to foster creativity and further the careers of independent filmmakers. The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions are filmmakers Eugene Corr and Xandra Castleton; Emily Doe, associate editor/producer of Wholphin; and Michele Turnure-Salleo, filmmaker services manager at the Film Society.

The Djerassi Resident Artists Program, located 40 miles south of San Francisco in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, will provide living and studio accommodations and all meals, at no cost, from August 10 through September 9, 2010. The award provides uninterrupted time for work, reflection and collegial interaction, making the opportunity unique in its capacity to provide the winner with an inspiring and supportive environment in a stunningly beautiful rural location. The winner and honorable mention were selected from more than 65 applicants from all across the United States and beyond, with applications arriving from as far afield as Columbia, Canada, England, Israel and South Africa. This award is supported by a gift from Dale Djerassi. Winner, honorable mention and projects follow.

WINNER
Kathryn Mockler of Toronto, Canada is a writer and filmmaker. She received her MFA in creative writing with a major in screenwriting from the University of British Columbia and her BA in honors English and creative writing from Concordia University. She was a Praxis screenwriting fellow, a semifinalist in the Academy Award Foundation's Nicholl Fellowship and a quarterfinalist in the American Screenwriting Association's 10th Annual International Screenplay Competition for her feature script Piss Tank. Mockler is a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre's Writers' Lab and was a participant in the Toronto International Film Festival's Talent Lab. She has also attended writing residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Sage Hill. Mockler has worked as a story editor and script reader, and currently teaches creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. She co-directed three video series and has had several short films produced. Mockler’s films and videos have screened nationally and internationally.

Weak People Are Fun to Torment (Toronto, Canada)
Thirty-year-old Gus, a college dropout, has just been asked by his father to move out of his house so that his father’s girlfriend and her daughter can move in, in spite of the fact that Gus has no job and no skills that would enable him to live independently. While coping with the death of his mother and his own feelings of guilt and resentment about her suicide, he struggles to move on with his life but finds himself being drawn back into familiar scenarios by his teenage brother, who not only has a drug problem but also seems to have the same mental illness as their mother. For more information: http://kathrynmockler.com.

HONORABLE MENTION
Mahdi Fleifel completed his BA in film production at the International Film School of Wales in 2003. While at school, he wrote and directed his first short Shadi in the Beautiful Well, set in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh, South Lebanon, where Fleifel spent his formative years. The film won numerous international prizes including the DM Davies Award, enabling him to make his second short Hamoudi & Emil, a comedy based on his later upbringing in Denmark. That film won the Best Foreign Short Award at the New York International Independent Film Festival. In 2006, Fleifel completed an MA in screenwriting at Royal Holloway University of London, then attended the National Film School where he wrote, directed and acted in comedies, most notably Arafat & I, the story of a neurotic Palestinian living in London. The film screened in competitions in Algeria, Palm Springs and Dubai and recently won the Best Film Prize at the Pisek Student Film Festival in the Czech Republic. Fleifel lives in London, England.

Palestine 3-Zero
A successful Danish-Palestinian director returns to the refugee camp where he spent his childhood and finds it very different from his memories in this black comedy. The camp inhabitants are consumed by World Cup fever and high stakes betting. The winnings could fund relocation from the camp. When the camp leaders hear they have a film director in their midst, all three order him to make a film to serve their interests.

For more information: sffs.org/filmmaker-services/grants-and-prizes or djerassi.org.

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 SFFS/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grants, the Herbert Family Filmmaking Grants, the Hearst Screening Grant, the Djerassi/SFFS Screenwriting Fellowship, SFFS Film Arts Forums and professional-level filmmaker classes.

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