Expanding adaptations

A Professor of Film from Edge Hill University was guest speaker at an international conference on screen adaptations recently.

Professor Roger Shannon, from the University's Department of Media, recently took part in the third annual conference entitled From the Blank Page to the Silver Screen, which was held in Lorient, France on 11^th June.

Professor Shannon, who has 30 years experience as film producer, festival director, writer and broadcaster, contributed a paper on the screen writing of UK writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, whose films have drawn on a wide array of sources, including war reporting memoirs in Welcome To Sarajevo, family biographies such as Hilary and Jackie, classic novels including The Claim, historical tragedies such as Revenger's Tragedy and his own novels including Millions and for the film A Cock and Bull Story Frank Cottrell Boyce adapted Tristram Shandy.

He said: "Having given the keynote talk at the conference's inaugural edition in 2007, I was delighted to be invited back to participate at this year's conference, entitled Expanding Adaptations. A great presentation was given by Professor Robert Stam from New York University, who has written extensively on the theory of adaptation. Amongst many stimulating papers, a highlight was Dr Joyce Goggin's paper on the film Avatar. The Chair of English Literature at Amsterdam University imaginatively redrew the cartography of adaptation studies to map in contours of industry, technology, economy and the history of viewing technologies. The growing reputation of the conference signals the increasing importance of adaptation studies in academic circles."

Organised by the University of South Brittany and the University of Paris-Diderot, the two-day conference attracted both international renowned and international participants from the film and literary fields, as well as members of the French film industry.

Academic debates were mixed with screenings of famous and not-so-famous adaptations of classics and contemporary literature.

The next conference of 'expanding adaptations' will take place at the University of Le Mans, France, in July 2012 and the theme is  Opening Pages, Opening Shots. For more details visit www.univ-brest.fr/HCTI/adaptation/index.html. Conference organisers, Ariane Hudelet and Shannon Wells-Lassagne, are looking to expand the discussion of screen adaptations beyond the orthodoxy of book/film aesthetics and encourage a wider understanding and discussion of originality.