Adaptation Film Festival, the jewel in CNW's crown, returns to our heartland of Dromahair 19 -21 October.
This year's festival will be the centre piece of our 10 years on the road celebrations. The Leitrim Mobile Cinema has been up and down Leitrim for over a decade and it will be driving on for another 10 years!
Watch this space for more information on our plans to celebrate the big yellow truck, it's staff, and the communities it has served.
Adaptation shifts focus this year on to the art of the adaptation
with our first writer/director: John Huston.
"Huston not only had a commanding knowledge of serious literature but, even rarer in Hollywood, a respect, reverence for it. He didn’t consider movies a high art, like painting and writing, and respected the author, not the director, as the auteur. Thirty-four out of thirty-seven of his feature films were adaptations of novels, stories, or plays. He worked with many major writers: James Agee, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tennessee Williams, and Christopher Isherwood. And he transformed into cinematic images the books of many important authors: Dashiell Hammett, B. Traven, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Carson McCullers, Rudyard Kipling, Flannery O’Connor, Malcolm Lowry, and James Joyce."From Chapter 5 of John Huston: Courage and Art, by Jeffrey Meyers
Enough said really... well perhaps a little more...
Huston became an Irish citizen, lived in Galway and made many films in the country; including the Ray Bradbury scripted Moby Dick. Ray died a few short months ago and thankfully we have an excuse to celebrate a novelist and screenwriter who could be the focus of his very own Adaptation festival.
Our main guest is John's eldest son and oft time collaborator:
Tony Huston.The other members of the family have work commitments
but might make virtual appearances nonetheless...
Friday 19th October18:00 FESTIVAL LAUNCHThe Woodview Bar
Nibbles and wine while we warm up for the main attractions.
18:45 Keynote Speech: John Huston's adaptations.
Professor Douglas McFarland will open the festival with a presentation on John Huston.
Douglas is editor of the forthcoming book John Huston's Adaptations.
“John Huston is one of the most prominent directors in American cinema. Although many of his best-known films are adaptations from literature, from 19th-century classics such as Moby-Dick and The Red Badge of Courage to works like The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
there has not been a comprehensive collection of essays which address
this central aspect of his work until now”
20:00 The Dead"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."21:30 Michael West and Tony Huston discuss adapting Joyce.
Playwright Michael West has just adapted Dubliners for the stage
Michael will interview Tony Huston who adapted the Joyce short story for his father's film.
22.30: Under The Volcano introduced by Professor Douglas McFarland
SAT 20th11:30 Ray Bradbury and The Making of Moby Dick
1pm Lunch: Fish and Chips
14:30 Annie: a family sing-along with Annie the musical.
15:00 Ted's talk: 'An Irish Film Industry or a Film Industry in Ireland'
In 1967, the Minister for Industry and Commerce set up the Film Industry Committee under John Huston to investigate the problems associated with the establishment of an Irish film industry and to advise on their solution.
Ted Sheehy examines The Huston Report.
17:00 Mr North
Danny Huston's feature film debut based on the book by Thornton Wilder
adapted by John Huston and featuring Anjelica Huston.
19:00 Un-producued: Rehearsed Reading
Jeremy Howe, Head of Drama at BBC Radio 4 returns to the festival with a live reading from an unproduced screenplay adaptation by John Huston.
21:30 The Maltese Falcon
22:30 – very late Film Noir Night in Blue Devon
Bring your sharpest clothes, hats and dancing shoes for a night of 1940’s glamour and intrigue.
Sun 21st
11:00 Cinema North West’s Bible Class
Our guest preachers introduce Wise Blood
14:30 African Queen
Director John Irvin came to Adaptation 2011 to present the original Tinker Tailor TV series. John loved Dromahair so much he is coming back again. Luckily for us he is as full of knowledge and passion for John Huston as he is for Le Carre. We promise stories about John Huston including a film he directed from horseback.
18:30 The Man Who Would Be King
Fresh from teaching for 2 days about the art of adaptation for the screen Stephen Cleary will help bring the curtain down on the festival by introducing a rip snorting adventure yarn.
21:00 – Late Closing Party at Stanfords
Raise a toast to 'all the living and the dead' as we say goodbye
to John Huston in 2012 and prepare to welcome Harold Pinter in 2013.
Adaptation - a two day screenwriting workshoppresented by Stephen Cleary
18 and 19th October Dromahair150 euro including lunch30 euro accommodation per night in a shared house
Some bursaries for course fees availableBook via info@cinemanorthwest.com Stephen Cleary’s world renowned ADAPTATION workshop returns to Ireland. This two day workshop is aimed at filmmakers, producers and writers who are planning to adapt work for the screen.
The first day introduces you to a new way of marrying the specific technical demands the original material makes of the writer with a fast and practical way of getting to the thematic centre of the adapted screenplay you want to write.
The second day shows how to use key screenwriting techniques to ensure your adaptation is truly cinematic as it moves away from the source material to achieve its own integrity. This is followed by a step-by-step guide through an adaptation screenwriting process.
"Stephen Cleary’s adaptation workshop came along at the perfect moment. We had just optioned a book and the process of deciding which elements of the novel we wanted to adapt and how we would set about doing it became so much clearer. I can’t recommend it enough!”
Natasha Marsh, Producer, Academy Award Winner, WASP
Stephen Cleary is a story developer and feature film producer. He has developed over 60 produced features with directors including Ken Loach, Milcho Manchevski, Michael Caton-Jones, Michael Winterbottom, Beeban Kidron and Marc Evans. He was Head of Development at British Screen for four years. He produced New Years Day in 2001, (Panorama selection Sundance Film Festival, Winner Best British Film Raindance Film Festival) and co-produced Goodbye Charlie Bright in 2002. That same year he was also co-screenwriter of the feature, Alexandria.
Colin McKeown
Programme Director
