MSU’s Film Studies program announced the 2022 winners of the Laurence Allen Tate Film Writing Awards. Josie Mitchell took the 1st place prize, Mary Claire Zauel was awarded 2nd, and Mitchell Griffith took 3rd place this year.
This is the fourth year this endowed award has been presented, which is open to majors and minors in Film Studies and minors in Fiction Filmmaking and in Documentary Production.
“The quality of the entries for this year’s Laurence Allen Tate Award was the highest it has ever been,” said Professor Bill Vincent, chair of the award committee. “The judging committee found it difficult to pick the top three, but after deliberation we were able to come to a consensus.”
Josie Mitchell was honored with the 1st place prize for her script Bi and Bye, which covered some aspects of biphobia within and outside of the LGBTQ+ community. “I’m grateful and honored to have been selected for the Laurence Allen Tate Film Writing Award,” said Mitchell. “The LGBTQ+ community deserves representation everywhere, but especially within cinema. It is a privilege to not only be recognized, but to be able to write on such themes.”
Mary Claire Zauel won 2nd place for her short script, Lemonhead.
“Writing Lemonhead was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I feel so validated by receiving this honor,” Zauel said. “When writing this screenplay, I wanted to explore what it means to find love when you are in the midst of finding yourself. The story is not just about coming out—it is about coming into your own, and the wonderful and terrifying experience that that brings.”
Mitchell Griffith’s 3rd place award winning essay was titled “The Queer Perspective and the Imaginative Gaze: A Response to bell hooks.”
“I was inspired by bell hooks’ essay “The Oppositional Gaze” due to its exploration into the politics of viewing cinema from minority perspectives. However, I thought it’d be integral to extend hooks’ analysis and transform it into an investigation into queer viewing practices, and the critical gaze that queer individuals utilize when viewing cinema,” Griffith said.
Griffith continued, “I am very honored to have received this award, and eternally grateful to all of the MSU Film Studies professors for their dedication to their students. A very special Thank You to Professor Ellen McCallum for encouraging me to continue this topic more extensively”
The endowed award was established in honor of Laurence Allen Tate (1945–2008), who earned a B.A. in English from Michigan State University and who was the Co-Founder and Assistant Editor for the weekly student publication, The Paper. After graduation, Tate moved to the San Francisco area and was involved in the Gay Men’s Health Collective of the Berkeley Free Clinic and San Francisco’s HIV/AIDs hotline service, Project Inform, from 1989-1993. He later moved to Washington, D.C., to work at the National HIV/AIDS Prevention Program at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Known early for his film criticism and anti-war essays, he wrote and spoke primarily about AIDS-related issues and the experience of being gay in American after 1981. A member of the Cherokee Nation, he was a member of Native Americans in Philanthropy and a former member of the board of the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center.
“He continued these commitments to the causes he cared deeply about,” Film Studies Professor Joshua Yumibe said, “particularly with regards to AIDS activism and Native American advocacy, throughout the rest of his life.”
For LGBTQ+ resources, visit https://lbgtrc.msu.edu/ and https://helpinglgbt.carrd.co/.