Journal of Screenwriting - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2022

Parts 1 and 2 of the Arab Jordanian series Rās Ghlaiṣ (‘The head of Ghlaiṣ’) (2006–08), written by Jordanian screenwriter Muṣṭafā Ṣāliḥ and directed by Aḥmad D‘aibis and Sha‘lān al-Dabbās, share three ‘common denominators’, in Haun Saussy’s terminology, with Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts 1 and 2 (1587): (1) the shepherd character as a monstrous despot, (2) pastoral love of the shepherds and (3) the mobilization of nations/tribes to take revenge against Tamburlaine/Ghlaiṣ. Ṣāliḥ’s delineation of the nomadic hero Ghlaiṣ is similar to the Marlovian model of Tamburlaine in a time of war and love. Ghlaiṣ, as an Arab Jordanian Tamburlaine, seeks in a Machiavellian manner an ultimate rule and control over all nomadic tribes in the Jordanian desert and behaves as a monstrous lover. This article takes two pieces of literature from two different cultures as an example of the adaptability of screen narrative to the scope of comparative literature and appropriation studies, showing simultaneously the experience of Jordanian screenwriters as one example of what Craig Batty calls the ‘screenwriting turn’ (2014: 1). Both Marlowe and Ṣāliḥ dramatize the shepherd despots to warn against the threat of colonial and imperial ambitions and models.

Can the writing of a screenplay or the making of a narrative fiction film be considered a form of academic research? This will be a familiar question for those professional filmmakers entering the academy. To answer this question, scholars of screenwriting and screen production face the difficulty of articulating their creative practice as research within the broader institutional research cultures of the academy. This article seeks to overcome this difficulty by reflecting on the methods employed in the process of screenwriting a biopic about British boxer Randolph Turpin. To demonstrate how screenwriting and screen production practice generates and disseminates new knowledge, I offer a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking as methodology, where mise en scène is shown to operate as a core reflective strategy.

In 2018, a group of ten academics and industry professionals created ‘The Secret Story Network’. This practice-research initiative produced ten 60–90-minute role-playing games conducted on the social media platform WhatsApp. In the process, we worked to identify and refine design strategies that incentivize engagement with the type of narrative collaboration that media scholars commonly call ‘collective storytelling’. Via the participatory action research methodology, this study evolved through cycles of prototyping, testing, feedback, reflection and modification. This article analyses our study in relation to the ‘Threefold Word Model’ for RPGs proposed by Kim. Based on the affordances of the WhatsApp interface, we suggest a modification of this conceptual frame, in line with scholars such as Edwards, Bøckman and Bowman that extends investigations into four theoretical lenses that we use to examine the stories in our study. These modes are (1) drama, (2) game, (3) simulation and (4) immersion. The observations made also suggest new avenues for ‘writing’ and creating interactive digital narratives.

Jenő Janovics was Transylvania’s pioneer in film and one of the first screenwriter–producers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He discovered talents like Michael Curtiz and Sir Alexander Korda. He wrote 31 film scripts, of which only one has survived: A tolonc (The Exile) and the silent film made from it, is the only remaining testimony of Curtiz’s and Janovics’s collaboration. In 2022, we commemorate the 60-year anniversary of the death of the former and 150 years from the birth of the latter. While all the known articles so far focus on Janovics’s legacy as a producer or a director, this article attempts to draw a portrait of Janovics the screenwriter, demonstrating his screenwriting qualities and his joint creative process with Curtiz in the case of A tolonc.

At the beginning of the pandemic, discussions in the Screenwriting Research Network questioned the validity of educating students for limited career opportunities as future screenwriters. Research into graduate pathways suggests employment opportunities for creative practitioners are far more complex with many creative practitioners embedded in diverse industries such as marketing, information technology and, primarily, the education sector. The rapid growth of online education presents a key opportunity for screenwriters to apply their craft skills and knowledge to an alternative disciplinary context. Storytelling, as a means of engaging learners or an audience, is a major area of overlap for screenwriters and designers of instructional resources. Stories that emotionally engage an audience have greater impact on the learner and assist in memory retention. A key tool for emotional engagement is the use of humour which has also been shown to facilitate learning. Writers of narrative comedy possess skills in creating humorous situations that can present challenging or serious topics through a comic perspective. This article argues that the growth in online education presents screenwriting graduates with unique opportunities to apply their skills to an alternative discipline that can streamline their transition to a career in writing for screens beyond traditional film and television.

Review of: Directory of World Cinema: Africa, Blandine Stefanson and Sheila Petty (eds) (2014)

Bristol: Intellect Books, 420 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78320-391-8, p/bk, £43.00

Review of: Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness, Agnieszka Piotrowska (ed.) (2020)

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 326 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47446-356-0, h/bk, £85.00