“Viimne reliikvia” ja “Kolme katku vahel”: ruumist eesti ajalookirjanduse ekraniseeringutes / The Last Relic and Between Three Plagues: On Space in Film Adaptations of Estonian Historical Fiction

Purpose. The article deals with the novels by Yuriy Kosach in the context of historiosophical and anthropocentric issues of the European and national existentialism. The study is based on the little-known historical novels ​“The Rubicon of Khmelnytskyi” ​and ​“The Day of Wrath​”. Theoretical basis. Yuriy Kosach’s prose oeuvre is an impressive and original phenomenon of the Ukrainian creative writing. It greatly regenerated the Ukrainian fiction in worldview, problematic and thematic, genre and stylistic aspects, showing the concordance with the need to modernize national and European literary-aesthetic consciousness of the 20th c. The historical and adventure novels “The Rubicon of Khmelnytskyi” and “The Day of Wrath”, which present a person against the historical background, are particularly conspicuous in the aspect of artistic portrayal of historical events and figures. Kosach managed to integrally render the concept of a person, to apprehend the depth of its nature and multiplicity of senses of its existence, to reconsider the complexity of psychological filling of a person’s inner world, to present a broad view of the problem of relations between people, to originally substantiate his anthropological concept which is the embodiment of the “national code”. Originality. It traces the evolution of the word picture of B. Khmelnytskyi, which unfolds against the background of sociohistorical events and moral challenges. For the first time it has been proved that in his historical and adventure novels with the elements of philosophism (existential antejizm) and psychologism, the prose writer showed the specificity of forming the historic figure of Hetman as a wise European helmsman, a state-minded person, and a leader of the Ukrainians. Conclusions. It has been emphasized that Yuriy Kosach raised important psychological, historiosophic and ontological problems such as a human being and its existence, life and death, psychological splitting, fate and a person’s destiny, morality, national identity, struggle for own rights and freedoms, feeling of responsibility for others etc.

The article presents a comparative and typological study of A Song of Ice and Fire by G. Martin and Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers. These works are analyzed together with their screen versions. The purpose of the study is to reveal the typological (genre, plot, ideological, philosophical, and narrative) similarities of both works. The conducted research is relevant as the comparative and typological approaches help to understand the ideological and philosophical messages related to the role of an individual in history and the temptations for heroes endowed with supernatural power. This analysis is performed based on a combination of typological and comparative approaches: the comparative approach helps reveal deep similarities between these two works, and the typological approach helps comprehend their role in a wide cultural context. The conclusion is made that A Song of Ice and Fire and Hard to Be a God have several typologically close features. They belong to the genre of hybrid fantasy, they do not have a direct assessment of events, and there is no “all-competent” author’s point of view. Nevertheless, there is a metaphor of “an involved observer” who, nonetheless, is also limited in his possession of information. Both works represent a common psychological motivation of the heroes, which is based on a “mechanical” response to evil with more violent evil; a shift from the Christian tradition, atheistic and agnostic philosophizing are also represented in both works as well as a broken denouement and unresolved lines associated with the fate of the main characters. It should be noted that the works studied here belong to different historical and cultural epochs but they illustrate the development of typologically similar trends in literature and cinema, which are as follows: the strengthening of a pessimistic view of man and history, weakening of the spiritual and moral component, lack of assessment of the heroes’ actions, breakage (or inevitable absence) of denouement. The works of these authors are immensely popular because they satisfy the unspoken “social order,” and in some cases, they form it.

Adaptation is an age long phenomenon in the arts. Life writings were adapted into novels and largely novels to plays. The trends continue to date. Adaptations are meant to artistically metamorphose a previous creative endeavour into a new one. An artistic work from one genre is transformed into another genre without losing sight of the thematic preoccupation of the source. Tunde Kelani adapted Akinwumi Isola's classic Yoruba Novel O le ku (It is Complicated) and Yinka Egbokhare's novel, Dazzling Mirage into films of the same titles, thus bringing the thesis of both works to a wider and heterogeneous audience. Despite the artistic and box office success of both films, and many essays on the film versions of the two novels, the extent of Tunde Kelani's fidelity to the thematic preoccupations and aesthetic considerations of the original works has not been academically interrogated. Therefore, this study examines the extent of Kelani's faithfulness to the ideology and aesthetic qualities of the original works. The primary data for the study depended on content analysis, structured interview and focused group discussion (FGD). Thus, the Akinwumi Isola's O le ku and Yinka Egbokhare's Dazzling Mirage and Tunde Keleni's cinematic adaptations were content analyzed. Both the literary and audio-visual versions was subjected to seasoned focused group discussion (FGD). The film producer and director; Tunde Kelani was interviewed. Secondary data were sourced from a review of relevant literature. Sarris' Auteur Theory was adopted to drive the discourse. The paper argues that the differences in the media of expression significantly influenced the minor discrepancies between the literary texts and their screen versions. It also argues that Kelani's box office target distracted him for a flawless fidelity to the original works. The study concludes that cineastes should enlist literary experts, who are knowledgeable about the principle of adaptation, and film critics in their production crew.

Adaptation is an age long phenomenon in the arts. Life writings were adapted into novels and largely novels to plays. The trends continue to date. Adaptations are meant to artistically metamorphose a previous creative endeavour into a new one. An artistic work from one genre is transformed into another genre without losing sight of the thematic preoccupation of the source. Tunde Kelani adapted Akinwumi Isola's classic Yoruba Novel O le ku (It is Complicated) and Yinka Egbokhare's novel, Dazzling Mirage into films of the same titles, thus bringing the thesis of both works to a wider and heterogeneous audience. Despite the artistic and box office success of both films, and many essays on the film versions of the two novels, the extent of Tunde Kelani's fidelity to the thematic preoccupations and aesthetic considerations of the original works has not been academically interrogated. Therefore, this study examines the extent of Kelani's faithfulness to the ideology and aesthetic qualities of the original works. The primary data for the study depended on content analysis, structured interview and focused group discussion (FGD). Thus, the Akinwumi Isola's O le ku and Yinka Egbokhare's Dazzling Mirage and Tunde Keleni's cinematic adaptations were content analyzed. Both the literary and audio-visual versions was subjected to seasoned focused group discussion (FGD). The film producer and director; Tunde Kelani was interviewed. Secondary data were sourced from a review of relevant literature. Sarris' Auteur Theory was adopted to drive the discourse. The paper argues that the differences in the media of expression significantly influenced the minor discrepancies between the literary texts and their screen versions. It also argues that Kelani's box office target distracted him for a flawless fidelity to the original works. The study concludes that cineastes should enlist literary experts, who are knowledgeable about the principle of adaptation, and film critics in their production crew.

Adaptation is an age long phenomenon in the arts. Life writings were adapted into novels and largely novels to plays. The trends continue to date. Adaptations are meant to artistically metamorphose a previous creative endeavour into a new one. An artistic work from one genre is transformed into another genre without losing sight of the thematic preoccupation of the source. Tunde Kelani adapted Akinwumi Isola's classic Yoruba Novel O le ku (It is Complicated) and Yinka Egbokhare's novel, Dazzling Mirage into films of the same titles, thus bringing the thesis of both works to a wider and heterogeneous audience. Despite the artistic and box office success of both films, and many essays on the film versions of the two novels, the extent of Tunde Kelani's fidelity to the thematic preoccupations and aesthetic considerations of the original works has not been academically interrogated. Therefore, this study examines the extent of Kelani's faithfulness to the ideology and aesthetic qualities of the original works. The primary data for the study depended on content analysis, structured interview and focused group discussion (FGD). Thus, the Akinwumi Isola's O le ku and Yinka Egbokhare's Dazzling Mirage and Tunde Keleni's cinematic adaptations were content analyzed. Both the literary and audio-visual versions was subjected to seasoned focused group discussion (FGD). The film producer and director; Tunde Kelani was interviewed. Secondary data were sourced from a review of relevant literature. Sarris' Auteur Theory was adopted to drive the discourse. The paper argues that the differences in the media of expression significantly influenced the minor discrepancies between the literary texts and their screen versions. It also argues that Kelani's box office target distracted him for a flawless fidelity to the original works. The study concludes that cineastes should enlist literary experts, who are knowledgeable about the principle of adaptation, and film critics in their production crew.

The intersection of literature and film, particularly through film adaptation, is critical to understanding cultural narratives and identities. This study examines the growing importance of examining how literary works are transformed into film, reflecting social changes and collective memory. The object is the screen adaptation of Serhii Zhadan’s novel Voroshylovhrad in the film Wild Field directed by Yaroslav Lodygin. The study explores the challenges and limitations inherent in adapting complex literary texts to film, including how key narrative elements can be simplified or changed, affecting original themes and character depth. The article’s goal is to find out whether the essential components of S. Zhadan’s narrative have been preserved in the cinematic version. The study uses a combination of semiotic, comparative, and structural analyses explore the transformation of narrative elements between the novel and the film. These techniques allow for a careful examination of how visual storytelling devices affect the depiction of themes and characters. The obtained results indicate that Wild Field quite successfully reflects the main motifs of the narrative of the literary base, but simplifies important elements, in particular, the motif of the road and the interweaving of memory and reality. The timeline of the film is moved to 2010, which leads to a significant change in the thematic emphasis. This led to a reduction in the number of key characters and a simplification of the plot, which somewhat reduces the depth of the original narrative. This study contributes to the field of adaptation studies by providing a nuanced understanding of the semiotic transformations that occur when literary texts are adapted into films, and emphasizes how Wild Field reinterprets the literary text of the novel Voroshylovhrad, offering an understanding of the cinematic representation of Ukrainian identity and memory. The study opens up opportunities for further studies of adaptation processes in Ukrainian cinema and literature, encouraging future research into other screen adaptations and the broader implications of such transformations for national identity narratives. In addition, it is proposed to study the audience’s perception of adaptations better to understand these cinematic interpretations' impact on cultural memory.

<i>Anne L. Walsh,</i> Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies<i>Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies</i>. Anne L. Walsh. Suffolk and Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2007. Pp. vii+172.

The twentieth century witnessed an abundant number of traumatic events related to dark history, like exiles and repressions by the Soviet regime in Lithuania in 1940-1953. In a single week of June 1941, the Soviets exiled 2% of the entire Lithuania’s population, while the total number reached nearly 14%. At the time, when it was allowed to speak about the unspeakable events of travelling to and surviving imprisonment in different concentration camps, numerous important works of various genres were published. The first historical novel in English - Between Shades of Gray - was written in 2011 by Ruta Sepetys, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. The novel was translated into 30 languages. In 2018 Marius A. Markevicius adapted the novel into a film titled “Ashes in the Snow.” The aim of the research is to discuss trauma and its reflection in literature and cinema, focusing on translation as screen adaptation. The novelty of the paper lies in the topic of (re)focalization when dealing with screen adaptation in relation to collective or personal traumas embodied in literary works. The concepts of conventional translation and adaptational translation by Henrik Gotlieb (2017: 52) are also discussed. The analysis of trauma is based on Cathy Caruth’s ideas who defines traumatic memories as non-verbal, so filmmakers have to find a way to express trauma when language becomes inaccessible and inadequate (Caruth 1996: 3-6). Gerard Genette’s three types of focalization, - zero, internal and external, - as well as visible and invisible narrator in the story, offer a new approach to the study of audiovisual translation from the perspective of screen adaptation according to the external and internal position of the focalizer in the narrative: perceptual, psychological and ideological.

This article considers the challenges Jonson's Volpone presents to contemporary performance, where its apparent resistance to comprehension and apprehension frequently results in adaptation. In spite of this, Volpone has captivated the French imagination, resulting in a prominent national tradition of adapting and performing Jonson's work, evidenced by four screen versions: Maurice Tourneur's 1941 cinematic adaptation and Frédéric Auburtin's television film (2003), as well as two filmed theatre productions, directed by Jean Mayer (1978) and Francis Perrin (2001). The adaptations are the result of a re-mediation process which has taken the Jacobean play to French stages and screens in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, turning Jonson's work into a specifically 'French' item through more familiar cultural codes such as Molière, Shakespeare, and screen comedy. Through a focus on each film's insistence on the layers of rewriting that separate them from Jonson's text, the article considers how each screen adaptation both figures and disfigures its early modern source while acknowledging its debt to the Jacobean playwright, and their aesthetic and ideological consequences to specific moments of French culture. Such layers of rewriting reveal both the play's flexibility and malleability while also indicating its paradoxical resistance to adaptation, particularly in the play's ending, which is significantly altered in each of the four adaptations. These alternative endings, the article suggests, destabilise the original's categorisation of comedy mixed with dark satire and are suggestive of the early modern source text having lost significance in the eyes of French film and theatre practitioners and their audiences.

Reviewed by: The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations ed. by Dominic McHugh Jeff Godsey THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MUSICAL THEATRE SCREEN ADAPTATIONS. Edited by Dominic McHugh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp. 674. Although the film version of Cats arrived too late for consideration in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, the questions and issues surrounding the reasons for its failure loom large throughout the book. Edited by Dominic McHugh, professor of musicology and curator of concert versions of Broadway musicals at the University of Sheffield, this massive collection of twenty-seven essays brings together leading scholars to consider the qualities that make a successful cinematic adaptation of a successful stage musical. McHugh, while referring specifically to “success” in the introduction, does not define it, and the essays vary widely in their determinations of how to measure it. Some of the writers focus on commercial success while others concentrate on artistic merit or critical achievement. Still others consider the effectiveness of specific aspects of a film. While the broad array of areas in which success is considered—critical, commercial, artistic, technical, and so on—and the consequent diverging methodologies and viewpoints provide critical insights and a multiplicity of starting points for future research, they also give the book a sprawling effect and leave the reader without a central theoretical underpinning. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The ultimate value of this book is that it creates a critical survey of topics in a subfield that has rarely been studied as such. [End Page 121] The book comprises six sections: the nature of adaptation; politics; identity; stars; multiple adaptations of single works; and production, commerce, and technology. As one might expect, the reasons for any single work’s failure span multiple categories, so the groupings are more suggestive than prescriptive, but this only underscores the complicated issues surrounding the subject. Such a taxonomy does not hamper the usefulness and enjoyability of the book for musical theatre scholars and theatre and film historians as well as popular readers with similar interests. It may be less useful for craftsmen who want to know how to make better films, as these essays rarely stray from theatrical and literary criticism into film theory or discussions of the technical elements of film from the point of view of filmmakers. Likewise, only a handful consider music theory, although it does make a refreshing appearance in a few of the essays. In addition to McHugh, who contributes two pieces himself, twenty-five essayists examine musical stage-to-screen adaptations from the earliest days of talking cinema (The Desert Song, Rio Rita) to twenty-first-century film (The Producers, Hairspray). Perhaps the best known of these writers is Geoffrey Block, author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from “Show Boat” to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (1997). Here, Block examines the extent to which a screen adaptation “should” emulate its stage source via the 1935 film version of Roberta, which he sees as superior to the original 1933 stage version. The key to the film’s success, he concludes, is that the creative team made changes to the original material to suit the new medium while allowing the original songwriters to be part of the refitting. This arrangement was generally not in place for other musical films in the 1930s. The writers here chiefly give the reader close readings of primary sources and other archival materials and then argue their own theories regarding the success or failure of the films under study. Each essay historicizes its subject, and there is some terrific archival work in the volume. Most take a comparative approach in analyzing the film(s). Hannah Robbins acknowledges the critical acclaim received by the film version of Kiss Me, Kate (1953) but critiques its erasure of African American characters and the limitations it places on female agency, both of which had been important components of the 1948 stage musical. Amanda McQueen argues for the success of Half a Sixpence (1967) at bringing the film techniques of the Hollywood Renaissance to the musical comedy form, and consequently bringing the genre up to date while noting its critical and financial failure, at least in...

Narrative film is as we know it today due to literature. From the consolidation of the still prevailing ‘Institutional Mode of Representation’ in early sound film, based on the techniques of the nineteenth-century novel, to the purchase of the rights of bestsellers by contemporary global film conglomerates, and from the recherché literary intertextuality of art house cinema to the lucrative commercial exploitation of a pre-sold book title of Hollywood movies, the influence of literature on film, Raymond Durgnat’s ‘Mongrel Muse’ (1977), is a fact of all cinematic fiction. The history of the relationship between literature and cinema is therefore logically the history of cinema itself, but the study of one particular aspect of this relationship, cinematic adaptations of literary texts, fosters the investigation of two important and specific questions. Firstly the formal nature of cinema in comparison to literature, and secondly the dialogue generated between the different historical, cultural and industrial contexts in which the literary text and its screen adaptation are produced.

One of the most sensitive treatments of the vampire tale is Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Blending horror with science fiction, the novel manages to infuse a familiar motif with an altogether original premise, and directly demonstrates the adaptability of the vampire to signify contemporary and future epistemological and axiological concerns. In Matheson's novel, the vampire is not a primordial being that has somehow managed to into the present, and whose presence now threatens the status quo. Instead, the creature is the result of a global bacterial epidemic that has transformed every human being, except for the story's lone survivor, Robert Neville, into the undead. Barricaded by night in his home from the neighbors who prey vigilantly on him, Neville ventures out by day to acquire supplies and to indiscriminately destroy anyone infected by the bacteria. Neville, who has dubbed the bacteria vampiris, sets up a makeshift biology lab in his home and desperately tries to find a cure (86). His motivation to eliminate the vampires is driven partly by survival instinct, and partly by anger against the disease that has robbed him of both his wife and daughter. He consigned the latter to the fire, for Only flames could destroy the bacteria that caused the plague (73). The narrative mostly oscillates between Neville's violent escapades and his despair at failing to unravel the bacteria's mystery, until his fateful meeting with Ruth. Initially, Neville suspects that she is a vampire, but when she is evidently unaffected by vampire repellents such as garlic and sunlight, Neville finally accedes that she is human after all, only to later discover that she is actually a member of an evolved community of vampires sent to spy on him, and engineer his capture. These vampires have learned to survive the daylight, and are working toward mobilizing a new society that will replace the previous, human one (158). To them, Neville is a dangerous threat whose death is necessary if they are to succeed in rebuilding civilization. Curiously, despite its innovation and popularity, I Am Legend has attracted little scholarly attention; available criticisms moreover, tend to concentrate on the screen adaptations rather than the novel, (1) which often results in a focal shift to the issues privileged in the films (such as race). (2) Like much Anglo-American science fiction in the 1950s and 60s, the novel's chief concern is the looming fear of a nuclear apocalypse and its aftermath. In Legend, the aftermath arrives in the guise of mutated bacteria from a recent nuclear conflict, which signals the end of humanity (56). Airborne, the bacteria's spread is swift, widespread, and inescapable, and the bacteria quickly transform every human person on earth into a vampire. These vampires not only feed on humans, but can contaminate and turn their victims into vampires with their bites as well. Matheson distinctly deploys a popular Gothic monster to comment on technological abuse, but also extends its figurative function to envision the state of our being and existence beyond our humanity. As a creature that resembles its victim in many ways, and thus stands as an intimate other to the human, the vampire is a profoundly effective metaphor to direct meditation on the place of humans as the dominant species, and our simultaneous potential for self-deconstruction and redemption. As such, while the vampire may augur the end of the human, it could equally serve as humankind's salvation and continuation after humans have engineered their own annihilation. Within the generic parameters of science fiction, I Am Legend clearly subscribes to the dystopian narrative. While dystopian texts are generally known for their apocalyptic theme and pessimistic tone, they are not summarily devoid of a compensatory tenor. As Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan assert, there are dystopic narratives that affiliate with eutopian tendency as they maintain a horizon of hope (3); these narratives do not [foreclose] all utopian possibility [but] negotiate a more strategically ambiguous position somewhere along the antinomic continuum (6). …

There's No Place Like Home(land) in American and Soviet Fantasy Cinema of 1939: <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> and <i>Vasilisa the Beautiful</i>

Within a single generation Nepal has seen a tremendous increase in higher education opportunities. This rapid growth has encouraged the participation of many young people from social groups previously unrepresented at university. A more questionable consequence however has been the growing divergence and complexity of the educational landscape which is particularly noticeable within the capital city. Focusing on the urban space, this paper discusses the spatial and motivational implications of these somewhat contradictory developments for the young generation of public university students and their future orientations. In particular, I argue that the young generation is in an ambiguous position – negotiating parental expectations of high educational attainments, and, the ominous devaluation of public education. Building on interdisciplinary research into youth geographies, the sociology of education and generational studies, I explore what students' spatial representations reveal about their attempts to negotiate these conflicting motivations and map out potential future pathways.

A Ballad and a Movie: Scandinavian TSB B21 and Ingmar Bergman's <i>The Virgin Spring</i>