Sep 17, 2012
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society today announced that screenwriting partners Maryam Keshavarz and Paolo Marinou-Blanco have been selected to receive this year’s $15,000 SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant for continuing development of their script The Last Harem. Additionally, Musa Syeed received an honorable mention for his script The Doctor. The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions were Tamara Badgley Horowitz, SFFS grants coordinator; Jennie Frankel Frisbie, agent, Magnet Management; SFFS Publicity Manager Bill Proctor; Michele Turnure-Salleo, director of Filmmaker360; and writer/director/actor Christopher Upham.
“The Last Harem offers a unique perspective on Persian history,” noted the jury in a statement. “Shining a spotlight on a period unfamiliar to many Western audiences, the evocative writing pulled the jury into a fully-realized world of intrigue, passion and power.”
The SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant, supported by a gift from William R. Hearst III, is a component of the expanding grants program administered through Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s robust filmmaker services department. For more information visit sffs.org/filmmaker360.
WINNERS
Maryam Keshavarz received her MFA from NYU-Tisch in film direction and has been making award-winning films for 10 years. Her documentary and short films have won numerous awards at top-tier festivals and have been broadcast internationally. Circumstance, Keshavarz’s first narrative feature, premiered to overwhelming critical acclaim at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, garnering the coveted Sundance Audience Award. The film also won Best First Film at the Rome Film Festival and the Audience and Best Actress Awards at Outfest, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. The Last Harem is slated to be her third narrative feature as a director.
Born in New York and raised in China, South Africa and Portugal, Paolo Marinou-Blanco studied philosophy and theater before pursuing an MFA in Filmmaking at NYU-Tisch. In 2007 he won funding from the Portuguese Film Institute to write and direct his first feature, Goodnight Irene, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to much critical acclaim, went on to travel to dozens of international festivals and was theatrically released in Europe in 2008. Marinou-Blanco now works in the U.S., Europe and Brazil as a screenwriter; The Last Harem is his first collaboration with writer/director Maryam Keshavarz.
The Last Harem
A battle between a young female musician and the mother of the newly ascended boy-king for the affection of the new monarch and control of the palace’s extensive harem will determine who becomes the most powerful woman in the Persian empire.
HONORABLE MENTION
Musa Syeed‘s debut feature film Valley of Saints premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for World Cinema: Dramatic and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. He previously co-directed Bronx Princess (Official Selection, Berlinale) and produced A Son’s Sacrifice (Best Doc Short, Tribeca Film Festival), both of which aired nationally on PBS. Syeed is also currently working on two interactive projects that were developed at the Bay Area Video Coalition’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies and the ITVS/Mozilla Hackathon. Syeed has also taught film for Williams College and was a Fulbright fellow in Egypt.
The Doctor
A lowly construction worker in New York City has managed to convince his family in India that he’s still a doctor. When they send his younger brother to live with him, he maintains the charade by working at the one clinic that will let him practice without a license. For information visit musasyeed.com.
Previous winners of the SFFS/Hearst Screenwriting Grant are Ian Olds and Paul Felten for The Western Habit (2011), Eric Escobar for East County (2010) and Mora Stephens for Made in the USA (2009).
Filmmaker360 offers unparalleled assistance and opportunities designed to foster creativity and further the careers of independent filmmakers nationwide and oversees one of the largest film grant programs in the country, which disperses nearly $1 million annually to incubate and support innovative and exceptional films. Other elements of Filmmaker360 include project development consultation, membership discounts and benefits, fiscal sponsorship, grants, residencies and information resources. Additional screenwriting initiatives include the Djerassi Residency Award/SFFS Screenwriting Fellowship, the SFFS/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant and Off the Page, a program that provides private script-reading sessions with celebrated actors for filmmakers with screenplays in development. For information visit Filmmaker360.