Cont Mhlanga was awarded the first freedom to create prize in London
27 Nov 2008
Mel Gibson has been ordered to appear in court by Los Angeles judge Gregory Alarcon to answer questions about the screenplay of his gory film The Passion of the Christ. Benedict Fitzgerald, who co-wrote the English version of the script before it was translated into Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin for extra authenticity, claims he was underpaid because Gibson diverted huge sums to his children's education during the filming in Italy five years ago and lavished $78,000 (£50,600) on a chiropractor, charges Gibson's lawyers have described as "utterly baseless".
The Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga was last night awarded the first ArtVenture freedom to create prize in London, though he was not there to collect it, having been banned from leaving his country by Robert Mugabe's regime. Not that they allow his plays inside the country either, though illicit DVDs of The Good President, the play for which Mhlanga won the $50,000 prize, do circulate. No prizes for guessing who The Good President depicts: an unnamed, genocidal African dictator who has been in power for 27 years. A second prize, for an imprisoned artist, was awarded to the Burmese satirist Zarganar, jailed last week for 45 years for the crime of creating "disaffection towards state and government".
