Best Screenplay
Roy Joseph Butler’s screenplay for The Masterpiece of Tamagata wins Best Screenplay at Only The Best International Film Awards.
In November 2019, Ilona Suschitzky approached us with a proposal to turn an unpublished short story into an animation. This was The Masterpiece of Tamagata, the only unpublished work by Betty Misheiker, a celebrated author and Ilona’s s mother. But how can you adapt a literary gem without losing its original power? And what’s the point?
This particular story is about the act of painting and its transformative power. As a painter herself, Ilona knew it had to be translated into paint, but not only that, because of the nature of the story, it needed to move.
“Misheiker’s story - a gem, a masterpiece... It caught my breath at the first read. And as the screenplay has unfolded, I’ve been lucky to revisit this emotion time and again.”
Roy’s first challenge was to respond to Misheiker’s text by visualising a painted world. The script developed over many months, with Roy stripping it back at each iteration. The dialogue and historical context gradually slipped away to make way for the energy and gesture of the painted mark and allow the fairytale to come into its own.
The second task was to soak up the cultural heritage that informs Tamagata’s world. During our development phase, we consulted experts from across the UK and Japan, including the British Library, V&A, Japan House, Daiwa Foundation and the Royal College of Music. Some have now become part of our core team. Although the dialogue in the script is minimal, we knew that it had to be in Japanese. Roy worked with Stephen Cullis in Japan and curators at the British Library to translate the text into Japanese, then back into English for subtitles imbued with a Japanese rhythm and sensibility.
We now have a blueprint for the production team, an award-winning script that we will bring to life on the screen.
“We look for creative ideas and projects with a different take that have something to say. Films in the most varied of genres and different lengths are the soul of this award, which focuses on finding and showcasing the best of the best.”
