Oct 24, 2013
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society today announced that Alistair Banks Griffin has been selected to receive this year’s $15,000 SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant for development of his script Snow the Jones. The SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant is awarded in the fall of each year to a writer residing in the United States who has been practicing for at least five years and who has previously written a minimum of one feature screenplay. The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions were Tom Grievson, SFFS director of communications; filmmakers Ian Hendrie and Maryam Keshavarz; and Michele Turnure-Salleo, SFFS director of Filmmaker360.
The jury said in a statement: “It was a very competitive round with very strong writer-directors in the mix. The projects tackled a myriad of contemporary issues opening the jury’s eyes to fascinating new worlds. The jury chose Snow the Jones due to its strong script pages and great potential in revealing an unexplored facet of the shadowy side of American commerce.”
“I am thrilled and deeply grateful to have the support and trust of the Film Society’s Filmmaker360 team in helping to bring this story to light,” said Griffin. “The extremely generous SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant is a rare gem for writers and directors trying to operate in less conventional circles, and it could not have come at a better moment.”
The SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant, supported by a gift from William R. Hearst III, is a component of the prestigious grants program administered through Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s robust filmmaker services department. For more information visit sffs.org/filmmaker360.
2013 SFFS / HEARST SCREENWRITING GRANT WINNER
Alistair Banks Griffin
Alistair Banks Griffin was born in England and raised in New Orleans. After earning a BFA at Rhode Island School of Design, Griffin premiered his short film Gauge at the 2008 New York Film Festival. In 2009 he was the recipient of a Cinereach grant for his first feature film script Two Gates of Sleep, which competed for the Camera D’Or in the Fortnight selection of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prize at CPH:PIX. He is currently participating in the 2013 Berlinale Residency with his period screenplay Therese, produced by Treme creator Eric Overmeyer. Snow the Jones will be his second feature film.
Snow the Jones
When teenage vagabond Lexi joins a traveling door-to-door sales crew, she discovers a world much darker than the one from which she was trying to escape. Snow the Jones explores the very real world of sales crews, where kids are taught to lie, cheat and steal to make sales while sleeping six to a room every night, ex-military managers force kids with the lowest sales to fistfight until unconsciousness and owners cook the books while hooking kids on drugs and life on the road. Lured into the lifestyle with promises of riches, new friends, adventure and nightly hedonistic romps in road side motels, Lexi soon learns that she has entered into a battle for nothing less than her own soul. Built upon the true stories of former sales crew survivors, the film is an experiential trip into a dark side of the American dream and a lost young girl looking for a place to belong.
For more information on the SFFS / Hearst Screenwriting Grant and the other Film Society grant programs, visit sffs.org/filmmaker360/Grants.
As with all Film Society grants, in addition to the cash awards, recipients will gain access to numerous benefits through Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s comprehensive and dynamic filmmaker services program. Filmmaker360 is a leader in the field of non-profit support of cinema and offers unparalleled assistance and opportunities designed to foster creativity and further the careers of independent filmmakers nationwide. Filmmaker360 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 at every stage of production. Other elements of Filmmaker360 include project development consultation, FilmHouse Residencies, fiscal sponsorship 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.
Recent Filmmaker360 success stories include Short Term 12, Destin Cretton’s sophomore feature which won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013 and is currently in theaters nationwide; Ryan Coogler’s debut feature Fruitvale Station, which won the Un Certain Regard Avenir Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013, has had a wildly successful theatrical run and is an Oscar hopeful in multiple categories; and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012, earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and became an indie box office smash. For information visit sffs.org/filmmaker360.