What's your story?
The Reader
Find out at Melbourne's favourite literary festival with these big screen adaptations.
"One can never expect a movie to be an illustration of the book one writes and represent what one has in mind as the author, or as the reader".
So says novelist Bernhard Schlink about the difficulty of having a literary creation adapted for the screen.
Film adaptations of written works have been a constant throughout the history of cinema and for every success (director John Ford became a master at them) there have been just as many - if not more - failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities anyone?) But when a filmmaker gets it right, it can complement - and even surpass - the original material.
To celebrate the unique bond between the silver screen and the written word, the Melbourne Writers Festival is proud to present a selection of literary films at ACMI, including Stephen Daldry's Oscar-nominated adaptation of Schlink's novel The Reader. Schlink himself will be on hand to discuss how the preoccupations of the novel - the roles of memory, guilt and the law in understanding the Holocaust - have weaved their way into Daldry's film.
Also in town will be writer John Boyne to introduce a screening of Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, based on Boyne's bestselling novel of the same name, and author and screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami who'll present Life is Beautiful (for which Cerami was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with director Roberto Benigni). And don't miss a rare screening of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, an adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's book that won the 1963 Palme d'Or.
The Melbourne Writers Festival will be at ACMI and Federation Square from Fri 21 Aug to Sun 30 Aug. Click here for more details.
Published Thursday, 13 August 2009
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