Orland filmmaker wins award at festival

ORLAND – Diane Lee’s return to screenwriting just received a big boost.

The Orland filmmaker’s work, “Stolen Children,” recently captured Best Screenplay of the Competition in the prestigious New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. She was notified of the honor Jan. 5.

The next step will be finding a film company to produce the screenplay.

“Festival [officials] want to shop it around, to get it produced,” Lee explained.

Lee said “Stolen Children” is about “two people lost in life, seeking relief from the pathos of the American dream. The story is set in the ’70s against a backdrop of a turbulent economic downtown and widespread political unrest.”

The screenplay focuses on what Lee believes is the deep-rooted cause of addiction, which is the stifling of creativity by society.

“Addiction is the result of an alienation of spirit, in people who are severed from their gift from the get-go,” she said. “They have to spend the rest of their lives finding out who they are. If they don’t find their gift, or their gift doesn’t fit into society, they end up suppressing their spirit through excess consumption, because of the system we live in. Our system has to change to support who we are.”

For years, Lee worked as a location scout for production companies coming to film in Maine. Then an accident six years ago left her with chronic leg and back injuries that have caused the great-grandmother to switch her focus to screenwriting.

She said her win at the New York festival was “divinely guided.”

Last July, a representative of the festival contacted a surprised Lee and asked her to submit her two short films, “Lizzie” and “Who Will Say Kaddish for Shapiro?” Next came a call inquiring if she had any screenplays, and she sent in “Stolen Children” and “Daydreams and Violets.”

“Stolen Children” was a 15-year-old script. Most festivals have a time limit, but fortunately the New York festival was not one of those.

All four of Lee’s works were voted in as finalists during the Los Angeles leg of the festival in September, with “Stolen Children” going on to win top honors.

Lee is now writing four new scripts. Her favorite among those is “SummerLand,” “about the future and how we get there,” she explained.

In the meantime, she’s waiting to see what her recent acclaim will mean.

“Hopefully, winning will be a door-opener for me,” she said.