Script Contest Entries Sought

The Oscar races may be taking the spotlight for the moment, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also is conducting another kind of competition--this one to encourage new screenwriters.

Winners won’t receive gold statues, but as many as five $20,000 fellowships are to be handed out. The money, provided by a grant by Don and Gee Nicholl, is given with the understanding that the winners will write and complete a new feature screenplay during the course of a year.

To enter, original full-length scripts must be submitted to the academy in Beverly Hills byJune 1, with a $25 entry fee. Last year, 2,888 entries were received, the academy said, up from 1,395 the year earlier.

Entrants may not have sold, optioned or worked professionally on a screenplay or television script, according to contest rules.

For the first time in the six-year history of the contest, the academy said the competition is open to entrants outside the United States, whose scripts are written in English.

An academy spokesman said the organization retains no rights to any of the scripts and does not involve itself in any commercial activity. But that is not to say anything commercial won’t occur. Currently, “Closet Land,” one of the screenplays written by a 1989 winner, Radha Bharadwaj, is showing locally. It was produced by Imagine Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures.