AFDA Durban Campus lecturer in Production Course, Academic Coordinator and Script Writing, Janet van Eeden has been invited to pitch her project at this year’s London Screen Writers Festival from 25 to 27 October and her lead actor Bradley Backhouse will pitch A Shot at the Big Time at the SME Funding Fair which will also be held in Pietermaritzburg on Friday, 25 October at the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business.
Hosted by Regent’s University in the heart of London, the London Screen Writer’s Festival is considered the greatest screen writers festival in the world. The festival is for writers & filmmakers, with insights into the screenwriting and filmmaking process as well as workshops and talks from top industry professionals along with pitching sessions. The Festival which is owned and operated by London Creative Festivals Ltd was launched in 2010 by Chris Jones, the filmmaker and director of The Guerilla Hanbook. Janet van Eeden and seventeen other writers and filmmakers from around the world have been selected to ‘Meet the Experts’ at this year’s festival out of 150 entries. “It is a great opportunity for me to pitch my project and find out different ways to source funding for the feature film, I am completely excited about going to this wonderful event,” said the screenwriter of White Lion, Janet van Eeden.
The panel of experts which David Nicholas Wilkinson has run annually since 1999 makes its debut at the LSF. The panel includes Producer David Nicholas Wilkinson, the founder and current owner of the Guerilla companies, David has participated in almost one hundred film panels chairing over thirty of them at the BAFTA, Screen Yorkshire, Screen South, Bradford, Galway Film Fleadh and many more. He also has devised and chaired MEET THE EXPERTS at the Edinburgh Film Festival with senior financiers, producers, commission editors and sales agents for over a decade.
British screenwriting team Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle also form part of the panel of experts, they first broke into the business by writing and selling a spec script, Newton’s Law, which then led to 14 further movie commissions from US studios such as Warner Bros, Universal, Laika and Intermedia; and UK companies such as Working Title, Pathe and BBC Films. Their shows have earned numerous awards and nominations, including… three BAFTA nominations, two Royal Television Society Awards and two RTS nominations for Going Postal; nomination for Outstanding Motion Picture Made for TV at the US Satellite Awards for Kidnapped; nomination for Best TV Series Drama at the Satellite Awards for Primeval.
Wrapping up the panel is Financier Gavin Poolman, born in Canada, Gavin graduated with an Honours B.A. in French Language and Literature from Trinity College, University of Toronto. Originally a software developer working on government and private sector contracts, after moving to the UK and graduating from the London Film School, he worked as an acquisitions and finance executive within Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas’s Film Trustees/Glinwood Group, where he was involved in the financing and licensing of The Sheltering Sky, Naked Lunch, A Rage In Harlem, Howard’s End and The Crying Game. In 1994, Gavin was appointed Head of Development at sales agency Mayfair Entertainment International (Jefferson in Paris, Vanya On 42nd Street, Richard III).
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