Jonathan Coe is Guest Artistic Director
Internationally renowned author Kazuo Ishiguro will be attending the opening night of From Page to Screen, the UK’s only film festival dedicated to the adaptation of books into films. The first night will feature the film adaptation of Ishiguro’s best-selling novel `Never Let Me Go’, following an on stage conversation between the author and Jonathan Coe, From Page to Screen’s artistic director and writer of bestsellers What a Carve Up! and The Rotters’ Club.
Ishiguro, who won the Booker prize for his novel `Remains of the Day’, will open the film festival, to be held in Bridport, West Dorset, on April 13-17th 2011. There will also be screenings of `Remains of the Day’, which was nominated for eight Oscars, and the `The Saddest Music in the World’, for which Ishiguro wrote the original screenplay.
Coe said: “Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most loved literary novelists of the past decade. We are delighted that he is coming to this year’s From Page to Screen event and it will be fascinating to hear him talk about the relationship between film and the written word.’’
Ishiguro said: “I was thrilled to discover that there is now a film festival dedicated to the adaptation of books into films and I am really looking forward to taking part in it.’’
Coe, whose novel The Rotters’ Club was adapted for television in 2005, has revealed some of the other films he has chosen for this year’s event. They include `Housekeeping’, filmmaker Bill Forsyth’s adaptation of the Marilynne Robinson novel. Forsyth will be on stage `in conversation’ following the screening.
Other highlights of the festival will include screenings of `Brighton Rock’, based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, `Barney’s Version’, a film adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s last novel, ‘The Dead’, adapted from the short story of the same name by James Joyce, and `They Were Sisters’, based on a novel by Dorothy Whipple. Nicholas Mosley, author of 13 books including Hopeful Monsters, will also talk to Coe ahead of the screening of Harold Pinter’s adaptation of his early novel `Accident.’
Coe, who has been a jury member for the Venice and Edinburgh Film Festivals, and film critic for the New Statesman, will announce the full line up of 19 films in due course.
From Page To Screen was founded in 2007 by Bridport Arts Centre, as a sister-festival to the Bridport Literary Festival and the Bridport Prize – one of the UK’s longest running and respected literary prizes.
Bridport Arts Centre in collaboration with The Electric Palace cinema will show 19 films over five days at the two venues. Most screenings will feature a talk by someone involved in either the book or the making of the film, giving audiences the chance to go beneath the surface of their favourite films and discover more about the film-making process. (Last year the Oscar nominated A Single Man – based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood – was introduced by Isherwood’s biographer, Kate Bucknall, who was adviser to director Tom Ford, while writer and journalist Lynn Barber made a special guest appearance at the screening of the An Education, the film based on her memoir of the same name.)
The 2011 festival will also launch a ‘flash-film’ competition, giving film-makers the opportunity to adapt the winning story in the Bridport Prize’s Flash Fiction competition in to a 60-second film, and there will be other short talks, workshops and screenings throughout the week.
The festival’s full schedule will be published in March. For up-to-date information and listings visit www.frompagetoscreen.org.uk.