#NotAFairy

When Tansy turns 30, she declares herself a #wasteofspace until she discovers she is one of the very real and bitter “Fairy Folk”. But she is not welcome and proving that she belongs might lead to the destruction of this magical yet dystopian world.

  • Josefina Valenzuela Cerda
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Television Script
  • Genres:
    Fantasy, Dramedy, Dark Fantasy, Drama
  • Number of Pages:
    56
  • Country of Origin:
    Chile
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Writer Biography - Josefina Valenzuela Cerda

Josefina is a screenwriter and trans-media creator from Chile. She lived in Peru during her pre-adolescent years and in the loneliness of a country marked by terrorism, she learned to tell stories through the letters she sent to her best friend, while TV taught her about the life outside

She graduated 2nd in her class with a Bachelor in Social Communications and Directing for Film and Media from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the University of California Santa Barbara in 2009. And has an MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage with a minor in Interactive Media from Northwestern University, 2018.

She has worked as an Assistant Director for advertising for the Chilean and European markets, as a Development Assistant and Coordinator for an award-winning film and TV series, and as a writer for a wide range of formats such as telenovelas, web-series, TV series, branded content, docu-realities, and video games. She was head writer on the adaptation of the ABC show “What Would You Do?” for the Chilean National Television Network (TVN) on 2016.

In her need to understand humans and their world first hand, she became an International Flight Attendant and has continued traveling the world, learning about stories and people from different cultures.

She won her first writing award when she was eight years old, for a short story about child abuse for UNICEF. Her student short film documentary “Steam View” was Official Selection at the Memphis, Sanfic and Valdivia International Film Festivals in 2008. She was the screenwriter of a branded content docu-reality that was nominated for the Effie Awards 2015. Her full-length play "Witch Trials" was selected for the Idle Muse Theatre Company’s Athena Festival 2017; her play “Beneath the Andes” was selected for Chicago Dramatist 2018; her thesis TV pilot “Terra Incognita” won the Krevoy Screenwriting Fund Prize 2018: and her latest production "The Circle", a narrative experience for virtual reality, was Official Selection at Sci-Fi and Fantasy Genre Lab and Los Angeles Lift-Off Festivals 2020.

She is currently writing and producing her second short film for virtual reality, directed by Gavin Reub.

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Writer Statement

I am Latina, an immigrant and a traveler of worlds. I am obsessed with telling stories of anti-heroines who have been lost in the margins and color them in realms of awe.

I am a genre writer and a world builder; I blend the lines between reality and fantasy, history and science fiction, madness and the supernatural, so I can explore the current social norms that constrain women, encourage discrimination, sexism, ageism, xenophobia, and create our need to find a universal human value.

I write dramas and dramedies about the unique, the obscure, the cynical, the villains and the secrets, but am always thinking about how I can bring the light into the darkness.

I believe that stories can show us the transcendence of love and the consequences of hate and move people to change for better.

I want to innovate, enchant and reach out to the corners of the world with collaborative creations for film, TV, and theatre. In addition, I have plunged myself into understanding and creating content for new and interactive media, to figure out how I can tell stories to the future audience.

#NotAFairy is about being a woman and turning 30, born from a fear and a wish. The fear of becoming old and useless, of finding that my life is meaningless and that I haven’t helped create a better world. And the wish of finding a place where I can escape to, where I can belong despite my insecurities, and that will help me understand what it means to be a woman.

#NotAFairy draws inspiration from diverse folklore and mythology to create an anti-heroine’s journey with its own magical world, a place embeded in this Earth and hidden from our view due to the actions of our ancestors, symbolizing the erasure of native cultures the “modern civilization” was built upon.