Facts & Highlights of the 2015 AWGIE Awards 27/10/2015 2:57 pm Facts & Highlights of the 2015 AWGIE Awards • 2015 marks the 48th Annual AWGIE Awards • Entries: ​​​486 • AWGIE categories: ​​24 • Number of nominations: ​76 • Special Awards:​​7 Feature Film Original & Major Award Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight’s The Water Diviner not only won Best Original Feature Film but also became the first feature film to take home the AWGIEs’ top gong, the Major Award, since 2012, when Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson won with The Sapphires. Feature Film Adaptation – two winners All of the four nominees for Feature Film Adaptation are writers who had written both a stage version and the movie screenplay of their feature. In the case of Sucker by Ben Chessell and Lawrence Leung, the movie was drawn from Leung’s stand-up cards-and-comedy show first performed in 2001 to 20 people at Melbourne University. The AWGIE for Feature Film Adaptation was awarded to two writers – Brendan Cowell for Ruben Guthrie and Tommy Murphy for Holding the Man Drama or Comedy, Other Forms The Katering Show, which became a surprise webcast hit with the digital generation and garnered Kate McLennan (with Kate McCartney) 2015 gong for Best Comedy Drama in Other Forms, was nurtured from the Australian Writers’ Guild’s Kit Denton Disfellowship. Television – Series (two winners) Writers of two blockbuster series were awarded the AWGIE in this category – Michael Lucas for Offspring: Episode 511 and Stuart Page for Wentworth: Series 3, ‘The Governor’s Pleasure’. Television Mini Series - Original Showing that cooperation works, 17 writers were behind the four dramas nominated in the Television Mini series - Original category at this year’s Awards, the AWGIE ultimately going to the four-member team of Deadline Gallipoli – Jacquelin Perske, Stuart Beattie, Shaun Grant and Cate Shortland. Shortland was also nominated for her part in The Kettering Incident. Television Mini Series – Adaptation Oscar nominee Jan Sardi and screenwriting legend Mac Gudgeon were awarded an AWGIE for their TV adaptation of Kate Granville’s The Secret River, a screen success whose earlier incarnation on stage won a 2014 AWGIE for playwright Andrew Bovell. http://www.awg.com.au/news-18/latest-news/740-facts-highlights-of-the-2015-awgie-awards.html Page 2 of 4 Facts & Highlights of the 2015 AWGIE Awards 27/10/2015 2:57 pm Television - Serial Louise Bowes’ episode of Home and Away won special applause at the 2015 AWGIEs when it crowned 10 years of nominations by winning Best TV Serial. Louise last won an AWGIE in 2005. Stage All three nominees in the Stage category tackled difficult issues. The winner, Jump for Jordan by Donna Abela, who won the Griffin Award in 2013, explores issues about the intersection of cultural diversity and lesbianism in the Arab community. Audiences at the Upstairs Theatre of Belvoir Street in Sydney would have seen Jada Alberts’ first play Brother’s Wreck grapple with issues around Aboriginal suicide and the processing of grief, while Kate Rice’s Monologue for a Murderer interrogates the presentation of ‘real-life’ stories with a ‘meta theatrical’ stream of consciousness ethical interrogation and recreation of the story. Children’s Theatre and David Williamson Prize Finegan Kruckemeyer topped his AWGIE for Children’s Theatre for The Boy at the Edge of Everything by winning the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre. Last year, Finegan was awarded two AWGIEs – for Children’s Theatre and Theatre for Yong Audiences and in 2009 for Best Australian Children’s Play. 2015 Richard Lane Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication to the Australian Writers’ Guild One of this country’s screenwriting legends Tim Pye received one of the Australian Writers’ Guild’s most prestigious accolades, the Richard Lane Award. John Doyle presented the award to a writer whose oeuvre reads like a rundown of Australian TV drama over the past 30 years, including Love Child, House Husbands, Old School, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Straits, Emerald Falls, All Saints, The Strip, White Collar Blue, Scorched, Stupid, Stupid Man, My Place, Lockie Leonard, SeaChange, Wildside, Changi, Grass Roots, Water Rats, E Street, A Country Practice and many others. 2015 Australian Writers’ Foundation Playwriting Award Angela Betzien and Patricia Cornelius – who won the 2015 Community and Youth Theatre Award for The Gap with co-writer Melissa Reeves - this year share the Australian Writers’ Foundation Playwriting Award presented by its sponsor Kim Williams AM. 2015 Fred Parsons’ Award for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Comedy Proving that writers get better with age, Bill Harding (66) won the 2015 Fred Parsons Award. Bill has been an active comedy writer for more than 50 years, starting his career in the mid 1950s writing the radio series Family Affair. Among his notable works for television were The Paul Hogan Show, The Norman Gunston Show, Denton, Corridors of Power and Life Support. 2015 Dorothy Crawford Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession The late Alan Seymour was memorialised by the Dorothy Crawford Award for outstanding contribution to the profession. Alan, who died in March 2015, produced work like The Potato Factory, Sara Dane and The Care of Time that critics said were integral to the Australian cultural canon. In 1991 he was nominated by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for The Silver Chair, although thirty years earlier his controversial Anzac Day drama The One Day of the Year had provoked death threats here in Australia. http://www.awg.com.au/news-18/latest-news/740-facts-highlights-of-the-2015-awgie-awards.html Page 3 of 4 Facts & Highlights of the 2015 AWGIE Awards 27/10/2015 2:57 pm © 2015 Australian Writers Guild TERMS OF USE (http://www.awg.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=232) DISCLAIMER (http://www.awg.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=233) BECOME A MEMBER (/membership-29/join-us.html) SITEMAP (/component/xmap/?Itemid=585) PRIVACY POLICY (http://www.awg.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=271) http://www.awg.com.au/news-18/latest-news/740-facts-highlights-of-the-2015-awgie-awards.html Page 4 of 4.