Zapruder’s other films in partnership with major players in the Australian screen industry is proud to reward courage and excellence in screenwriting.
Presented by the Australian Writers’ Foundation (AWF), the prestigious Kit Denton Disfellowship is a $30,000 grant to help get a pioneering idea written for screen production. It is awarded to a writer, or writing team, who have demonstrated a willingness to challenge the status quo though their work.
The recipients of the 2011 Disfellowship are Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney for their edgy narrative comedy series, Bleak. The winning project is about reaching your thirties, being spat out of a relationship and realising that you’ve accomplished absolutely none of the things you thought you would. No partner, no possessions, no career. It’s like being back in your twenties, but without the hope.
The Disfellowship was set up in 2007 in memory of Andrew’s father, Kit Denton – scriptwriter, author, poet and lyricist, whose most famous work was the international best-selling novel The Breaker about the trial and execution of Breaker Morant.
Previously known as the Kit Denton Fellowship, the competition was relaunched in 2011, its fifth year, as a Disfellowship because winning it may mean that ‘your nan disowns you, your neighbours shun you and the shock jocks call for you to be locked up’.
According to Andrew Denton, “We are hoping to attract strong, exciting, subversive ideas; a project of exceptional quality and innovation that will make for great Australian television, film or new media”.
In addition to Zapruder’s Other Films, the $30,000 Disfellowship is generously supported by Animal Logic, FremantleMedia Australia, Hopscotch, GNWTV, Princess Pictures, Shine Australia and TressCox Lawyers. It consists of a $25,000 cash prize and pro bono legal advice from TressCox Lawyers to the value of $5,000.
For more information go to http://www.awg.com.au/
PREVIOUS WINNERS
The recipient of the 2010 Kit Denton Fellowship was George Catsi for his comedic and ironic project, I Want to be Slim. I Want to be Slim, is a morality tale centred on the Rev Slim Limits, leader of ‘The Church of the Holy Cowboy’, a satirical organisation that parallels the American Evangelical style churches, with references to Hillsong.
In 2009, the fellowship was awarded to a Victorian theatre company, Back to Back Theatre, in recognition of its groundbreaking work. One of Australia’s leading contemporary theatre companies, it has forged its own unique relationship to theatre, developing an original, distinctive artistic voice and a working process that supports its ensemble of actors with intellectual disabilities as its creative core.
In 2008, playwright Suzie Miller was recognised for her project Truth which explores the story of a 10-year-old child killer.
The inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship was awarded to renowned screenwriter Ian David, best known for his ground breaking reality-based dramas Police State and Police Crop, which won AFI Awards in 1989 and 1990, and the AWGIE Award winning Joh’s Jury (1992).
BACKGROUND
Kit Denton, a lifetime member of the Australian Writers Guild, died in 1997, having written novels, short stories, radio and television documentaries, verse and lyrics, and feature films scripts. He was also a script-assessor for the Australian Film Development Corporation and script-consultant for Film Australia.
Kit was a writer’s writer. Always drinking in the work of others. Constantly making himself available to those who sought guidance. Unfailingly professional.
He was also a man of commitment and integrity, never afraid to speak the truth as he saw it. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the sequel to his most famous work, The Breaker, a novel about the trial and execution of Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock at the hands of a British military tribunal during the Boer War.
The Breaker was an international best-seller and most authors would have been happy to leave it there. Not Kit. A decade after its publication, he published a sequel, Closed File, not a work of fiction this time, but an attempt to tell the truth of the story based on information he had received in the intervening years.
The fact that Closed File was, in some ways, an admission by Kit that his original work was “top-dressed with dramatic license” (his words), did not bother him. Kit was interested in the truth – always – even if it was at his own expense. That takes courage.
When Geoffrey Atherden, President of the Guild’s Foundation approached me recently with the idea of setting up a scholarship in Kit’s name, I suggested that the criteria be simply that: courage.
With an increasing concentration of media ownership coinciding with a rise in fundamentalist thinking, the need for genuine free-thinkers – those unafraid to question and challenge the status quo – is greater than ever.
A writer can display courage in many ways: By independence of thought. By an expression of a deeply unpopular view. By persevering in the face of limited resources. Or by a refusal to baulk at seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
The aim of the Kit Denton Disfellowship is to support writers of courage in a material and practical way so that they may be heard in full voice.
