LAHORE: A writing contest carrying a Rs100,000 prize entitled The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women has been introduced.

According to a press release, the award is named in the honour of Zeenat Haroon Rashid (Jan 21, 1928-April 8, 2017), a founding member of the Women’s National Guard at the time of Independence who became a symbol for women’s empowerment in Pakistan.

The prize will be awarded annually through a competition for writing in English on the subject of Women and Pakistan. This will be the first time a substantial cash prize awarded to an unpublished piece of writing.

The competition will be open to all women of Pakistani nationality or Pakistani heritage (with CNIC or NICOP) aged 18 and above and entries will be original, previously unpublished works in the form of either memoirs, polemic, essay or short story of no more than 3,000 words. The topic must be central to the theme of Women and Pakistan and the judges will look for a piece of writing with a strong, personal voice.

From amongst all entries, the best will be chosen for consideration by a panel of judges. The panel will then draw up a shortlist of six from which a winner will be chosen.

The 2019 panel of judges includes Ameena Sayid, founder of Karachi and Islamabad literature festivals, Moni Mohsin, author and columnist, Irfan Husain, author and columnist for Dawn, Sadia Quraeshi, filmmaker, Muneeza Shamsie, author and literary journalist, and Shan Vahidy, a freelance editor working in London who is also the granddaughter of Zeenat Haroon Rashid.

The winning entry will be published online, and if appropriate, in a national magazine or newspaper. The closing date for entries is July 15, 2019 and the winner will be announced later in December.

Short film workshop: The week-long short film workshop mentored by internationally acclaimed film-maker Jamil Dehlavi concluded at the Institute for Art and Culture (IAC) here with the screening of two projects produced by budding film-makers, said a press release on Monday.

It said the workshop, arranged by the Institute for Art and Culture (IAC) from March 4 to 11, was attended by 14 participants from the leading educational institutes besides independent film-makers.

In the six-day intensive training workshop, Mr Dehlavi briefed the participants on the basic techniques involved in production of a film. He shared his valuable experience and helped the aspiring film-makers in learning the global requisites for production of short films.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Dehlavi said production of a film required extreme dedication and only through practice they can improve their standard of work.

IAC Vice Chancellor Sajida Vandal distributed the certificates among the participants in the concluding ceremony. She thanked Jamil Dehlavi for sparing time for the workshop, saying that the IAC would arrange more workshops in the future with renowned film-makers and international experts for students.

The workshop was supervised by Assistant Professor Ali Ijaz. He said the participants learned a lot about pre-production, production and post-production process of film-making.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2019