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Scripts sought for Film Festival’s summer workshop

Vancouver directors Stopkewich & Bessai to instruct

The Whistler Film Festival is seeking feature script submissions for a new exclusive two-day summer workshop.

The workshop will take place Aug. 13-14 in Whistler and will be led by two acclaimed Canadian filmmakers based in Vancouver, Lynne Stopkewich and Carl Bessai, who is also the president of the festival’s board of directors.

The scripts must be dramatic feature length (no less than 80 minutes) and in the second draft or finished stage, intended for commercial release or broadcast.

Up to six scripts will be chosen for the workshop, which carries a fee of $500, including two nights accommodation with breakfast and lunch.

The workshop is the latest edition to the Film Festival Society’s year round programming, which includes the Reel Alternatives monthly cinema series and outdoor summer screenings and new summer film camps for youth.

The workshop’s focus on Canadian feature film script development is congruent with the festival’s goals to become a centre for the discovery and support of independent Canadian feature filmmaking. In 2004 the festival debuted the $10,000 Phillip Borsos Prize for Best Canadian Feature Film premiering at the Whistler Film Festival, and Bessai has stated that he believes the Whistler Festival has the potential to be undiscovered Canadian independent filmmakers what the Sundance Film Festival is to up and coming American independent filmmakers.

Bessai recently completed the "eco-horror art house zombie film Severed , which is due out in 2005 and is currently in production with his latest feature film Unnatural and Accidental . Stopkewich, an alumnus of the University of British Columbia’s MFA film program, is best known for the independent feature film Kissed . She has recently made the foray into television, directing episodes for several series including Bliss, DaVinci’s Inquest, The L Word and the CTV television feature The Life, and is slated to direct two episodes of CBC’s This Is Wonderland in 2005.

For submission guides and further information on the two-day script workshop go to www.whistlerfilmfestival.com.