Screenplay competition seeking Rhody-based films

Organizers of the Rhode Island Screenplay Competition this week expect to name a winner from four finalists.
The contest was created by the state film office and the Rhode Island International Film Festival to draw Hollywood’s attention so more feature films would be made in the Ocean State.
“We wanted to find talented screenwriters who could use Rhode Island as a location for their screenplays and, hopefully, as an important character in their stories,” said Steven Feinberg, executive director of the R.I. Film & Television Office, explaining the goals of the contest, held for the first time this year but expected to become an annual event.
An integral element of the competition is the focus on Rhode Island as a key part of the script. The unique nature of the smallest state makes it prime fodder for a story that capitalizes on and incorporates those distinctive features found nowhere else, contest organizers have said.
As a result, a movie based on the winning screenplay would not only provide jobs for local residents and generate business for the state’s economy, it would also introduce interesting aspects of the Ocean State to the movie-viewing world and perhaps even draw visitors in the future, Feinberg suggested.
The four screenplays up for the grand prize are: “The Ashes of Albion,” written by Peter D. Spameni of Smithfield; “The Garden Gate,” by Amy Kalif and Jennifer Eaton of Middletown; “Old Hoss” by Kevin Faria of Bristol and Duncan Putney of Providence; and “Ultra Light,” by David Eliet of Pawtucket. Finalist writers all live in Rhode Island, even though the contest was open to others.
Putney, an actor, screenwriter and member of the festival advisory board, came up with the idea of the competition. But in an interview with Providence Business News, he dismissed his role and credited Feinberg and his assistant, Carol Conley, as well as festival Executive Director George T. Marshall and his staff.
“I just came up with the idea,” Putney said, noting there is nothing new about it because other states hold similar competitions.
Regarding his own status as a finalist, Putney seemed embarrassed by the potential conflict. He said the script submitted was mostly the work of Kevin Faria and he did not know that Faria would enter it in the contest. “Old Hoss” is about Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, a baseball pitcher with the Providence Grays who led the team to victory in the first World Series in 1884. Some 40 screenplays were submitted and were initially screened by a panel of readers, with no names attached to the entrants so the readers did not know who wrote the pieces, Marshall explained. Each script received three reads and each reader scored each work on the basis of a specific set of criteria, such as potential marketability, quality of the writing and use of Rhode Island as a character in the story.
The winning script will receive five free pitches to Hollywood studios and producers on VirtualPitchfest.com and a copy of screenwriting software. In addition, Feinberg, who worked in the Los Angeles film industry and has maintained close ties to Hollywood movie-makers, will publicize the winner to his contacts in California and to national media outlets.
Spameni, an art director and copywriter in the New England advertising industry for more than 20 years, said he learned of his finalist status only recently.
“It’s very exciting,” he told PBN. “I’m looking forward to the results and hope I win.” But regardless of who wins, “it would be a great thing to bring more films to Rhode Island,” said the lifelong state resident.
His script, “The Ashes of Albion,” is a period drama set in Providence and in the Lincoln village of Albion after the Civil War and concerns a family in crisis in the aftermath of the war.
Kalif said she and her sister, Eaton, wrote “The Garden Gate” as a “drama with a touch of magic involved.” Both are teachers; Kalif teaches Spanish at Middletown High School and Eaton, art at the Kingston Hill Academy, a charter school in South Kingstown.
“Our script would make a phenomenal movie,” Kalif said. ‘It has a little bit of everything about Rhode Island in it, the ocean, Galilee, Providence, RISD [the Rhode Island School of Design].”
Judging the finalists to choose a winner is a panel of four individuals close to movie-making and to Rhode Island: Michael Corrente, well-known film producer and director originally from Pawtucket; Feinberg; Anne Mulhall, casting director and principal of LDI Casting, the state’s only casting agency; and Michael D. Corso, CEO and principal of Sakonnet Capital Partners LLC in Providence, which invests in feature films. &#8226

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