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Virginia Film Office Announces Screenwriting Competition Winners

The Virginia Film Office has announced the winners and finalists of the 2005 Governor’s Screenwriting Competition:

Winners:

Touch
Bruce Sanborn
Charlottesville

A painfully shy gardener becomes involved with a mysterious woman who possesses an unusual power to heal. He's trying to find the courage to expand his life. She's trying to find the courage to end hers.

Nunley
Alan T. Williamson
Midlothian

Nunley is a lawyer who only takes cases that he can settle with a plea bargain, just so he'll have more free time to pursue his real interest in life…chasing women. Unlike most lawyers, Nunley isn't concerned with winning every case. In fact, he couldn't care less about winning. Nunley is only concerned with getting his clients to "plead out" so he won't have to build a case and actually go to trial. But Nunley's life is suddenly turned upside down when he takes on a murder case and ends up being framed by the FBI. Nunley then finds himself running from the law with his client, an aging, burnt out, leftover hippie, in tow. Nunley's forced to clear his own name, which means that for the first time in his career and his life Nunley takes on a case that he intends to win - his own!

Another Man's Freedom
CB Wilson
Ruther Glen

In the stifling Virginia summer of 1963, a black man and a white woman struggle to find a place for themselves in society's suddenly-changing landscape. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation's capital and a murder in their own small town intensify the search for resolution and honor in their lives.

Finalists:

Sovereign Ground
Brian C. Baker
Sterling

A disgraced politician exiled to the Ambassador's post of a backwater nation is assured political redemption if he keeps the fires of outsourced industry well-stoked. When the head of a rebel group claims sanctuary within the embassy walls, government forces surround the embassy. The Ambassador finds himself under siege, and the outcome hinges on whether he chooses to salvage his political future, or honor the values that began his political career.

8 Days Till Dawn
Laura E. Grabowski
Fairfax

Ben Harris, a busy advertising executive, cares about one person and one person only: himself. However, when he learns that his mother was in an automobile accident and is in a coma, he begins to question his priorities. He spends all his free time in the hospital, telling his mother stories about the life he wishes he had, a life where he is married to an ex-girlfriend his mother adored and has a child with her. After six years, his mother wakes up and she remembers everything he said. Now Ben must find a way to create the life he told her about -- or risk sending her back into a coma.

Telomeres
Kathryn Kuhlen
Alexandria

Growing old's a bitch, and philandering journalist Derek Flanagan discovers just how far some women will go to turn back the clock. Suspicious of the supposed death of his mother-in-law at a Virginia assisted living facility, he stumbles onto the story of the century. The facility is really a front for the anti-aging research work of the brilliant maverick woman physician in charge. She's harvesting growth hormones from the pituitaries of kidnapped men to fuel a chemical fountain of youth and prematurely aging her victims in the process. Will she add Derek to the grisly assembly line?

Out of His League
John D. Leslie & Mike Gandolfi
Richmond

John Turner, an eleven year old baseball fanatic and mediocre little leaguer, is the son of a single middle-class mom. When an opportunity arises for John's overworked, business tycoon father to enlist John's favorite major league player, Boomer Kennedy, a self absorbed Prima Donna in the twilight of his hugely successful baseball career, the elder Kennedy seizes it. In the course of this comedic adventure, we see John learn that things are not always as they may seem, while Boomer learns lessons in humility and compassion. In the end, we all discover that in life it isn't always whether you win or lose, but more in how you play the game.

C-ville
M. Charles McBee
Charlottesville

A single mom working for Albemarle County must solve a boundary dispute among three hostile, quirky parties. The unclear lines criss-cross over a lake, under which is a potential fortune in natural gas. She must also deal with her grief-stricken father, a former UVA basketball coach who is the target of a lust-filled neighbor, and her ex husband, an ex-con with a suspenseful connection to the boundary dispute.

Force Majeure
Victoria Ellis Nye
Virginia Beach

Two days before Christmas. Stuck in an airport. A raging snow storm outside. The holidays are never good to Nate Orlando. But, somehow, this one just might turn out differently.

Nobody Or a Nation
B. David Peck
Richmond

When a world renowned black financier learns he may get a Presidential appointment, he anticipates a thorough background check. He decides to make his first visit to the African birthplace from which he was sent as an infant. He discovers that his parents founded a vital, Utopian country before they were killed, and he must decide whether to accept the rare opportunity in America or to help his actual homeland survive a threat to its existence.

Special Ed
Joel Ratner
Oakton

It takes the Special Education kids to teach Ed (their bus driver) how special he is when their impromptu field trip becomes an FBI manhunt for the PTA's "most wanted."

1851
Robert Remy
Springfield

A young slave couple struggles to have a normal relationship despite myriad physical, social and economic roadblocks that make it seem all but impossible.

The Deuce
D. Kirk Richardson
Richmond

In the vibrant 1904 African-American community of Jackson Ward, a newspaper writer, a theater manager trying to expand, and a silent-movie hero looking for a miracle come together at just the right juncture to create a film that's not just pictures, but a story. In The Deuce, invention is the culmination of inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Spirits of the Southern Moon
Edwin Simmons
Hanover

A man named Henry tells of a time when renegade Klansmen took over his country, burning churches and murdering innocents. Outnumbered, he seeks to enlist three comrades from his old outfit, Company K, 13th Virginia Calvary, two of whom agree to join him. However his former commander Captain Jeter, once a kindly man who, before the Civil War, had intended before the Civil War to become a doctor and free his salves. He has become an embittered racist and refuses to join in Henry's "little war." Jeter, though, is a haunted man and the spirits troubling him drive him to action. They also restore his peace of mind which had been wrecked by the horrors of the Civil War.

Updated: 11/08/2005

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