VOL. 23, NO. 16	FEBRUARY 27, 1998

Shuping Lu Roman. Record Photo by Joe Pineiro.

hese are breathtaking days for Shuping Lu Roman, 33, a third-year film student at Columbia’s School of the Arts, who has both talent and perfect timing.

  Shuping learned in the first few days of February that she was among six finalists nationwide in the prestigious Writers Guild of America/Scenario magazine screenwriting competition. Last Saturday night, she was honored at the annual WGA/Scenario award dinner.

  Her script, “The Widow,” took third place, and, almost as satisfying for the School of the Arts Graduate Film Division, she was the only student from a top-ranked film program among the finalists. Among the “big four” film schools—Columbia, N.Y.U., the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A.—only Columbia had a winner.

  By coincidence only a few days after Shuping learned she was among the finalists, Columbia’s department of East Asian languages and cultures hosted a top-level delegation of film directors, actors and film and television executives from China, who gave a campus seminar on Chinese cinema on Feb. 5 with Columbia faculty.

  Professor David Wang, East Asia department chair, invited Shuping and Film Professor Janet Roach, who had nurtured Shuping’s script in Advanced Screenwriting and Screenwriting Revision classes, to the seminar and a private luncheon afterward with faculty and the delegation.

  At the luncheon, Shuping, a native of China, lived an aspiring filmmaker’s dream—to mingle and chat with the likes of Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director of “Raise the Red Lantern” and “To Live,” who was the first Chinese director to be nominated for an Oscar, Feng Xiaoning, director of “Red River Valley,” and film star Ning Jing.

  And, yes, she handed them copies of her script. But because “The Widow” was written in English, Shuping was asked by Zhang to translate it into Chinese so he could read it, a task she is now undertaking.

  This last twist in the story of Shuping’s recent successes provides an exquisite touch of irony because Shuping came to the United States to study from Zhejiang Province in 1991 barely speaking English.

  Seven years later, she wrote her award-winning script in English. To be asked to translate it back into Chinese is a twist worthy of Hollywood.

  Of writing in English, she says, “It is a bit awkward but I think I am able to express myself pretty well.”

  “Shuping’s script is truly touching with richly developed characters, heart-rending emotion and brilliant touches of humor,” Roach, her professor, says. “It deserves prizes.”

  Set in China in 1983, the script tells the story of a young woman who, when widowed, is obliged by tradition to marry her brother-in-law, a tradition she defies at great cost to herself.

  The tale is not based on personal experience.

  “I wanted to write about a strong-willed woman and this was a way to do so,” says Shuping whose own tastes in American film runs to comedy—she cites Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen as particular favorites—and to Steven Spielberg fantasies such as “E.T.”

  While earning a master’s degree in psychology at N.Y.U., Shuping married a fellow student.

  Her husband is now a doctoral candidate in psychology at N.Y.U.

  The good news Shuping received about her screenwriting followed by only a few weeks the birth of her first child, a healthy baby girl named Lily.

  Shuping is now at work on a script about the relationships among five families living in a compound in China.

  “It’s a sentimental story, a drama, but it’s humorous, too,” she says.