Best film scripts awarded prizes at Victoria

A Victoria University of Wellington Masters student has won the annual David Carson-Parker Prize for his feature film script The Sun At Night, set in Wellington's youth and drug culture.

Jack Barrowman, (above), a Masters student in the Creative Writing programme at Victoria’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML), received his $3,000 prize at a function last night.

The prize is awarded annually to the best script written in the Masters course in Creative Writing at the IIML.

Victoria Scriptwriting Programme Director Ken Duncum describes Jack’s script as both devastating and compelling.

It tells the story of Alex, barely past his teens, who wants to move forward with his life but is trapped in a constant cycle of using, and then recovering from, drugs and alcohol.

When Alex discovers that a close friend of his is regularly plying young women with drugs to enable date rape, he struggles with the dilemma of how to stop him while maintaining his own addictive habit.

The prize, funded through the Victoria University Foundation, was first established by the Embassy Theatre Trust, then funded by arts philanthropist the late David Carson-Parker. It is now supported through the generosity of Jeremy Commons.

At the same function fellow MA scriptwriter Abby Howells was awarded the Brad McGann Prize for her feature film script Standing Up, a road movie about two rival comedians forced to drive together from Auckland to Dunedin.

The annual Brad McGann Prize of $2,000 was established in memory of Brad McGann, writer and director of iconic New Zealand feature film In My Father's Den.