Madam Black, a short film written by Matthew Harris, one of our senior tutors in Auckland, has recently picked up Best Short Film at The Rialto Channel NZ Film Awards (the ‘Moas’).  The film has now won 38 international awards, including the Prix du Public at the Clermont-Ferrand in France – the biggest audience prize for short film in the world.  After this weekend’s win the film was described by Rialto as a “globally acclaimed short” on an “historic awards run”.   Matthew says “the volume of these festival awards are definitely encouraging, so I’ll be devoting a lot more time to screenwriting, but I maintain other areas of interest too – short fiction, academic writing, teaching – I’m looking forward to tutoring Creative Writing this semester!”