"Frida" screenwriter to judge scripts at NHFF

[Recent press release from the New Hampshire Film Festival in Portsmouth, NH.]

Diane Lake Selected to Judge Screenplays for 7th Annual Festival

Portsmouth, N.H., July 26, 2007 - Diane Lake, a screenwriter on the 2003 Academy Award-winning film Frida, has been named the first-ever screenwriting judge at the seventh annual New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF). Lake, a screenwriting professor at Boston's Emerson College, will judge the top three screenplays submitted to the Festival, which is scheduled for October 11-14. She also hosts a session during the Festival entitled "How to Break into the Business of Screenwriting."

"We're thrilled to have a professional of Diane's caliber on our panel of judges," says Nicole Gregg, executive director of NHFF. "Her session on screenwriting will be a highlight of our industry expert panels."

A working screenwriter since 1993, Lake has been commissioned to write films for many major film studios, including Columbia, Disney, Miramax and Paramount. She has also written a mini-series for NBC and created a half-hour series for CBS. She has written work for numerous independent producers as well as actors such as Dustin Hoffman and directors like Harold Becker. Projects currently in development include Distance, the story of Berthe Morisot, the French Impressionist painter, optioned by Blue Collar Films; Chandler, a film noir set in 1930s Los Angeles where the writer Raymond Chandler becomes involved in the kind of murder cases he only writes about, being packaged by Roth/Arnold Productions; and A Thousand Cranes, an epic love story set against the backdrop of the bombing of Hiroshima in WWII, produced by Digital Domain Studios. Frida opened the Venice Film Festival in 2002 and was named one of the 10 Best Films of 2002 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, among others. Frida was also nominated for six Academy Awards in 2003.

The mission of the non-profit New Hampshire Film Festival is to celebrate the art of filmmaking. NHFF unites highly talented students, professional filmmakers, and screenwriters with industry experts, educators, avid movie-goers, and film connoisseurs from around the globe for a highly interactive weekend of nationally recognized and undiscovered gems, culminating in a gala award ceremony on the historic shores of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For more information, visit www.nhfilmfestival.com or call (603) 647-6439.