Humanitas Prize Recognizes Fox Projects for Powerful Social Messaging
For 40 years, the organization Humanitas has awarded its Humanitas Prize to film and television writers whose works demonstrate effective social messaging and powerful insights into human life. The winners of the 2014 Humanitas Prize were announced at a luncheon in Los Angeles on Friday, and three of the ten projects honored were Fox productions.
In the Feature Film category, John Ridley won for the screenplay to Fox Searchlight's 12 Years a Slave, also the winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Picture. "This is very special to me, that an incredible community of writers would recognize my work and the work of Solomon Northup," Ridley said at the ceremony. "When people look at storytelling as a means to convey emotion, touch people, and try and change the world, that's kind of awesome."
Fox was also a winner in the television categories. Writers Alex Gansa and Meredith Stiehm won for "The Star" episode of Homeland, produced by Fox 21 Television Studios, and Elaine Ko won for the "Under Pressure" episode of Modern Family, produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television.
"We are so proud and honored to add this year's Humanitas Prize winners to the long list of writers whose work has both entertained and inspired us for the past four decades," said Humanitas executive director Cathleen Young. "It is a formidable group."
Over the course of the evening, Humanitas awarded more than $100,000 across 10 categories of writers whose works "entertain, engage, and enrich the viewing public." Six of the twenty film and television productions nominated in the content categories were produced and/or distributed by Fox, and previous Fox winners include Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, Ryan Murphy for Glee, David Shore for House, and Steve Levitan for Modern Family.
Father Ellwood Keiser founded the prize in 1974 as a means of recognizing the effect that film and television can have on audiences. "By bringing into our living rooms human beings who are very different from ourselves in culture, race, lifestyle, political loyalties, and religious beliefs, we can dissolve the walls of ignorance and fear that separate us form one another," he said.
