2003 Virginia Screenwriting Competition Winners

• Ivor NoelHume

  Civilized Men

  The English landed on an island in Virginia’s Great River in April, 1607, and called it Jamestown. But dissention among the colonists’ leaders, coupled with sickness, shortages of food, and disputes with the Native Americans they called “savages,” soon had the settlement at the brink of failure. In the frigid winter of 1609-1610 that came to be known as the “starving time,” the survivors would have voted to go home had there been ships to take them.

• Gene Harris

  Lost Time

  Barton Bishop, a cynical and self-hating man, accidentally injures a black woman while driving in his graveyard-shift factory job. Barton and his sometime girlfriend Liz, his father, and his teenage daughter determine that the woman, Emma, is a slave from the family’s ancestral plantation who somehow has been transported through time to the present. At the insistence of his father and daughter, Barton begrudgingly begins to help Emma find out what became of her children and descendants and to help her acclimate to the 21st century. In doing so, he starts to rediscover purpose in his own life. But the people who accidentally transported Emma forward through time have other plans for her…

• Robert Davenport

  Six Court Martials Of Uriah Levy

  “The Six Court Martials of Uriah Levy” chronicles the rocky military career of America’s first Jewish officer. Uriah Levy rose to the highest rank in the United States Navy, despite simmering anti-Semitism and his own arrogant and self-destructive behavior. It’s a humorous look at a man who even today holds the distinction of being the most court-martialed officer in US military history

• Megan Holley

  Sunshine Cleaning

  Rose Lorkowski is unmarried at the edge of thirty, cleaning houses to provide for her young son and settling for scraps of affection from another woman’s husband. This is not what she ever imagined for herself. Desperate to change the trajectory of her life, Rose quits her job and, along with her sister, enters the grisly but lucrative industry of crime scene cleaning. As the two scrub away the residue of death they discover what is truly important in life.

Finalists

• T.K.Ellmore

  Carte Blanche

  A retired actress from Hollywood’s golden age bucks the modern system and reopens her late husband’s long-shuttered studio to make the picture begun at his death.

• Khedijah Iman Vidal

  Grandma’s Hands

  “Grandma’s Hands” spans decades to address color lines drawn within black communities. It deals with the mis-education of a dark skinned child born into a mulatto family. A child forced to face an old woman’s anger for being born black and to experience a rage so intense that it reaches from the grave to influence an entire family.

• Diane Rhodes-Michaely

  Gs2000

  When 12 year-old Matt is blackmailed into sabotaging the science project of the girl genius next door (Felicia), he ends up changing himself into a chameleon and her into a parrot. In their quest to become human again, these two kids must outwit an evil scientist and stop Matt’s dad (William) from making the biggest mistake of his life. But to do so, they must first convince the wildlife FBI that they REALLY are human.

• Judith A.Bird

  If Warriors Wept

  After a disenchanted soldier is seriously wounded, he begins a relationship with his vibrant, life-affirming physical therapist, who motivates him to search his past to find the reasons why he cannot emotionally connect to people. Although he forms tentative ties to her and her family, will the bonds be strong enough to help him decide which choice to make when he is faced with a life-or-death challenge Can he be the author of his own redemption and opt for life, or will he follow the self-destructive legacy of his family?

• Christopher Cunningham

  Jews Us

  This is a period piece that takes place just before the dramatic airlifts: Operations Moses, Joshua and Solomon, which rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews.

• Tom Randolph

  Mosby’s Raiders

  “Mosby’s Raiders” is based on the true story of John Mosby and his band of guerrilla fighters who lived and fought in the northern Virginia countryside. Sometimes they slept in the homes of sympathizers, sometimes in little holes dug out of the earth. They would meet when the word went out. Never more than forty showed up at a time for a fight against the occupying army, which outnumbered them forty to one.

• Brian C.Baker

  Purgatory

  When a drunk driver kills her father and daughter, Detective Aubrey Case abandons the law to exact vengeance. For the next seven years she dwells in a solitary confinement cell, a victim of one night’s violence and loss. Her sorrow causes her to deny the family she has left despite their efforts to secure her parole… Until the day rioting prisoners take Aubrey’s sister and young son hostage in their wild rampage through the prison.

• Carole Bellacera

  Understudy

  After a disfiguring car accident, Amy Shiley, a lonely young woman from the wrong side of the tracks, is mistakenly identified as her best friend, the popular and rich Robin Mulcahey. When she realizes Robin is dead, Amy decides to take over her identity because it’s the only way she can stay close to the man that rejected her– Robin’s older brother.