The VII SGAE Script Award 'Julio Alejandro' has been announced

El próximo 15 de noviembre se cierra el plazo para participar en el VII Premio SGAE de Guión ‘Julio Alejandro’. El ganador se conocerá en el marco del próximo Festival de Cine Español de Málaga.

The General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) and Iberautor have announced the VII edition of the Julio Alejandro Feature Film Screenplay Award. As in previous editions, the contest is open to all SGAE member authors of any nationality and to authors without links to any society or copyright management entity residing in Latin America.

The deadline for submitting original scripts, which can be written in any of the official languages ​​of Spain, will end on November 15. The names of the five finalists, who will compete for the only prize consisting of a payment of 50,000 euros, will be announced in March 2010 during the Malaga Film Festival.

El Premio SGAE de Guión Julio Alejandro es, además de una plataforma de promoción para los jóvenes valores del cine, un tributo a la memoria del guionista y dramaturgo oscense Julio Alejandro (1906-1995), estrecho colaborador de Luis Buñuel. De hecho, trabajó junto al genio turolense en algunos de sus títulos más emblemáticos, como Viridiana, Nazarín, Simón del desierto o Tristana.

The SGAE and Iberautor created this award to enhance the quality of the creation of authors in the audiovisual sector and encourage the launch of film projects based on the creation of scripts.

The works participating in this seventh edition will be analyzed by the Reading Committee chosen for the occasion, who in March 2010 will announce the names of the five finalists aspiring to the final prize of 50,000 euros. From that moment on, the finalists will receive 600 euros so that they can prepare a public exhibition of their script before the Competition Jury during the next edition of the Malaga Spanish Film Festival, which will take place in April 2010 and where the winner of the competition will be announced.

Past editions

Remedios Crespo (Seville, 1966) won the VI SGAE Julio Alejandro Screenplay Award for Feature Film for his work orange honey. For her part, the Argentine author Ana Piterbarg was the winner of the V edition thanks to her work We all have a plan. Other former winners of the contest already rub shoulders with the greats of Spanish cinema. This is the case of the Navarrese Félix Viscarret, who won the 2004 edition with the text every summer and who received seven nominations in the last Goya awards for his film under the stars. Likewise, the winner of the third call, the Uruguayan Ricardo Fernández Blanco, has seen how On site, the script with which it was presented, came to the big screen by the director Ana Díez and the producer Tornasol Films.

Julio Alejandro, un guionista internacional

Julio Alejandro de Castro (Huesca, 1906–Denia, 1995) destacó como guionista cinematográfico y autor teatral en Iberoamérica y España. Después de luchar como marino republicano durante la Guerra Civil y la Guerra del Pacífico, se convirtió en uno de los autores más internacionales de nuestro teatro, estrenando sus textos en España, México, Chile y Argentina desde los años 40. Paralelamente, escribió los guiones de ochenta películas filmadas en México y España, con directores iberoamericanos de la talla de Tito Davinson, Indio Fernández, Tulio Demicheli, Gilberto Martínez Solares, Benito Alazraki, Arturo Ripstein, Felipe Cazals o Luis Alcoriza. Su asidua colaboración con Luis Buñuel, en ambos lados del Atlántico, dio lugar a títulos inmortales en la carrera del cineasta aragonés, tales como Abismos de ín, Viridiana, Simon of the desert o Tristana.