This meeting, held as part of the event “Literature as a space for reflection”, saw a debate between cinema professionals and writers on questions related to the degree of fidelity to the literary work when writing the script for a play or a film, and on the techniques for transforming a novel into a script.
Speaking on this occasion, Moroccan director Fouad Souiba indicated that in trying to compare the two disciplines, “the film industry is historically weak compared to literature, due to its late invention”, noting that “the seventh art has come to use everything that preceded it, such as novels, short stories or even music”.
He quoted American writer Linda Seger, author of the book “The Art of Adaptation” to say that adaptation is the lifeblood of the film and television industry, adding that “the great classics of cinema are almost all taken from literary works, such as “The Birth of a Nation”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca”.
Turkish novelist, playwright and screenwriter Sedef Ecer, for her part, noted that the “betrayal” of the literary work in the adaptation is “practically inevitable”, particularly due to the different writing techniques for the 6th and 7th art in comparison with writing a novel and the need to adapt the writing of the screenplay to the budgets of the productions and also to the number of actors and comedians used.
In this regard, she cited the experience of a play adapted from her novel “National Treasure”, in which she tells the story of a Turkish cinema diva who asks her daughter during her lifetime to write her a funeral speech and to organize a big show praising her old films with the actors who had supported her in her roles.
“This story was supposed to be a play, but because of the Covid pandemic I had to resign myself to writing it as a novel. Shortly after, a screenwriter adapted it for the stage, shrinking the 350 pages of the novel into 45 pages of script. She had to make choices and remove certain characters and scenes from the novel and I accepted, because the adaptation of my novel allowed a completely different work to emerge.”
Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch echoed the same sentiment, indicating that the exercise of adapting a literary work begins “from a crush on a story” but that adaptation to cinema is a sort of “betrayal of the literary work”.
In this sense, he cited the experience of the feature film “The Horses of God”, an adaptation of the novel by the author Mahi Binebine “The Stars of Sidi Moumen”, indicating that he had “fallen in love” with the novel by the Moroccan author, but had “moved away from the narrative story proposed by the author, to create a completely different form of cohabitation between the different characters in the film”.
“There are authors who ask to stay close to the transition to writing the screenplay, while others delegate the work to the filmmaker to make another work, this was my case with Mahi Binebine, I abandoned the screenplay project that I was undertaking before adapting his novel for this short film,” he noted.
Organized under the High Patronage of HM King Mohammed VI, by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication in partnership with the Wilaya of the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region and the Council of the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region, SIEL-2023, which continues until June 11, is marked by the participation of 661 Moroccan and foreign writers, intellectuals and poets who will illuminate the sky of this renowned international exhibition with their intellectual contributions.
2024-08-16 01:39:45