Death and Resurrection on the If Island

The castle of If is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Marseille. This 16th-century fortress was a prison from 1540 until the First World War. Tourists from all over the world are drawn by the presence of a prisoner who has never been there because he never existed: Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte-Cristo. This chapter analyses how this castle became a confluence space between fiction and reality and a venue for various film adaptations of Dumas' novel. It also shows how this romantic pamphleteer managed to overcome the paradox of giving authenticity to a tourist spot without paying any attention to historical facts or verisimilitude. The chapter draws on the concepts of literary and dark tourism, the concept of aura linked to authenticity in the work of art, and the concept of literary tourist.

Ecofeminism in Film Adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song

This article off ers a pioneering ecofeminist study of Viktor Ivchenko’s Lisova pisnia (1961) and Yurii Illienko’s Lisova pisnia. Mavka (1980), two Soviet Ukrainian film adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s eponymous fairy-drama (1911; Forest Song). It focuses on the interrelated depiction of gender and nature along with the drama’s ideological and material aspects: androcentrism and deforestation. The production of both fi lms coincides with, and arguably refl ects, what Marko Pavlyshyn describes as “the emergence of a conservationist consciousness” in the USSR in the 1960s. The article’s goal is therefore twofold – to bring new ecofeminist insights into Ukrainian fi lm studies and to raise eco-awareness about the Volyn Polissia, which provides the setting for Ukrainka’s drama and its adaptations, and currently faces environmental devastation from illegal amber mining.

Vazov in Bulgarian cinema

The article analyzes the artistic features of the best film adaptations of several works by Ivan Vazov – the novel Under the Yoke and the novellas Characters and Outcasts. It also examines the dialogue between the literary original and the scripts, the cinematic means of expression and the literary techniques. The paper also discusses the director’s concepts and acting achievements in the respective film adaptations.

Comparative Study of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca Film Adaptations. Chronotope of a “Castle”

The article performs the comparative study of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca film adaptations. It investigates motion pictures by A. Hitchcock (1940), R. Milani (2008) and B. Wheatley (2020). The analysis of the narrative-discursive techniques used by these authors aims to consider the problem of screen representation of the Rebecca’s specific spacetime model. The main investigated subject is the screen image of Manderley estate, its impact on diegesis, plot and symbolism in these movies. Manderley as an aesthetic complex corresponds to the chronotope of the “castle” in the interpretation of M. Bakhtin. Accordingly, the comparative study of the operations performed with it reveals the most important characteristics and traits of this spacetime model and shows how it applies with the detective genre or plots with a detective component. The “castle” as a spacetime structure that outlines the external boundaries and sets the internal laws of diegesis; its role in the “mystery” logics and the development of detective intrigue; “castle” as a plot-forming principle and metacharacter — all these questions concerned in terms of screen arts.

The Name of the Hobbit

This chapter takes as its focus the collapsing of fantastic medievalism and palaeontology in the narratives surrounding the discovery of homo floresiensis, the petite hominin species which has been called ‘the hobbit’ since it was uncovered in a cave on the island of Flores in 2003. The chapter analyses how homo floresiensis came to be seen through the prism of the globally exported medievalist fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth novels and their film adaptations. The medievalizing of the Flores hominin exposes the capacity for ‘the medieval’ to stand in for ‘deep time’ and the primeval past. The chapter also examines the racial politics underlying this episode, arguing that the framing of the Asian hominin within Tolkien-influenced medievalism constructs a limiting image of a globally conceived humanity. It reminds us that global medievalism has the potential to reinforce rather than unsettle the Eurocentric legacy of the Middle Ages in the modern world.

Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film

<p>This thesis examines the adaptation of stage plays to cinema, and of films to theatre. The creative component of the thesis consists of my full-length play script Hamlet Dies At The End, and the script of its feature film adaptation (Song’s End), plus material from my film script Roy Jiminton and the script of its adaptation to theatre. The critical component of this thesis examines seven stage-to-film adaptations and four film-to-stage adaptations, in order to illustrate the distinctions between writing for the two different mediums and to suggest principles to aid scriptwriters in adapting material between theatre and film. The thesis concludes with discussion of the decisions I made when adapting my own scripts. This thesis argues that to successfully adapt play or film scripts from one medium to the other, the adaptor must be willing to incorporate significant change in order to effectively ‘adapt’. Adaptations that merely transpose from the stage onto the screen, or vice versa, fail to engage with their new medium. This thesis also proposes a set of adaptation principles for script adaptors.</p>

Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film

<p>This thesis examines the adaptation of stage plays to cinema, and of films to theatre. The creative component of the thesis consists of my full-length play script Hamlet Dies At The End, and the script of its feature film adaptation (Song’s End), plus material from my film script Roy Jiminton and the script of its adaptation to theatre. The critical component of this thesis examines seven stage-to-film adaptations and four film-to-stage adaptations, in order to illustrate the distinctions between writing for the two different mediums and to suggest principles to aid scriptwriters in adapting material between theatre and film. The thesis concludes with discussion of the decisions I made when adapting my own scripts. This thesis argues that to successfully adapt play or film scripts from one medium to the other, the adaptor must be willing to incorporate significant change in order to effectively ‘adapt’. Adaptations that merely transpose from the stage onto the screen, or vice versa, fail to engage with their new medium. This thesis also proposes a set of adaptation principles for script adaptors.</p>