Home > 37ºSouth Market > Program Archive > Adrian Wootton 2013
Adrian Wootton Talks Icons
Presented MIFF 37ºSouth Market & Accelerator, Adrian Wootton returns exclusively to Melbourne for another series of his acclaimed Illustrated Film Talks exploring the relationship between cinema and great modern cultural icons. A former Director of the London Film Festival, British Film Institute and the UK’s National Film Theatre, Wootton is presently Film London’s Chief Executive, Director of the Crime Scene Festival, and a program advisor to the Venice Film Festival, London Film Festival and Italy’s Courmayeur Noir Fest. Wootton has also served as BFI Head of Exhibition, Director of Nottingham’s Broadway Media Centre and Director of the Bradford Playhouse. He contributes articles on screen culture to the Guardian and Sight & Sound, regularly broadcasts and reviews films on BBC Radio, is working on several book projects and was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Norwich University of The Arts where he is Visiting Professor of Film & Media.
Each lectures is $19 full / $14 concession (MIFF passes are not valid).
THE ROLING STONES: 50 Years on Screen
Thursday 01 August: 5pm to 6.30pm; Village Roadshow Theatrette at the State Library During their illustrious half-century career, the Rolling Stones have appeared countless times on film and TV, dabbled with feature films and been the subject of numerous ground-breaking documentary films by some of the world’s great film-makers. Revel in the on-screen adventures of the world’s Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band as Stones aficionado Wootton explores their exciting screen history in this illustrated talk featuring clips from films such as Gimme Shelter, Rock and Roll Circus, Sympathy for the Devil and their very latest documentary Crossfire Hurricane, plus rare TV appearances and an extensive slide show. The Rolling Stones also appear in two films in this year’s MIFF program: Muscle Shoals and Twenty Feet from Stardom.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: The Jazz Age on Screen
Friday 02 August: 5pm to 6.30pm; Village Roadshow Theatrette at the State Library
Following the recent release of Baz Luhrmann’s new film adaption of The Great Gatsby, Wootton chronicles the rich history of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), the great golden boy of early 20th century American letters whose writing – especially his iconic novel The Great Gatsby – defined the Jazz Age of the 1920s. With extensive use of film clips and slides, the talk explores Fitzgerald’s uncomfortable and complicated relationship with Hollywood that saw his novels made into silent and sound movies (and remain a staple for screen adaptation to this day) and a stint a screen-writer for MGM.
WILLIAM FAULKNER: Nobel Prizes & Pulp Fiction
Saturday 03 August: 10.30am to 12 noon; Village Roadshow Theatrette at the State Library
Following the recent Cannes Film Festival launch of James Franco’s adaptation of Faulkner’s 1930 classic As I Lay Dying, Wootton traverses Faulkner’s life and work – especially his adventures and misadventures in the screen trade – and shows that while Faulkner (1897-1962) wrote critically-acclaimed, academically-revered and stylistically complex fiction that garnered every major literary award, he was also, surprisingly, a long-term Hollywood screen-writer who co-wrote the 1944 screen adaptation of Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not and maintained a close friendship with movie-making legend Howard Hawks.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: “Papa” & The Movies
Sunday 04 August: 10.30 to 12 noon; The Cube at ACMI
Hugely influential for his prose style and known the world over for his action man (“Papa”) lifestyle, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who saw most of his major work adapted for cinema and had a brief adventure working on documentary film-making, was mostly a film refusenik. This talk, with film clips and slides, explores the life and times of this great American novelist, who defined so much of American manners and culture in the Twentieth Century, and his relationship to film.
FITZGERALD, FAULKNER & HEMINGWAY: Great American Writers & Hollywood
Friday 02 August: 10am to 11.30am; Village Roadshow Theatrette at the State Library
A condensed compendium lecture aimed at both the time-poor and students, this talk traces the lives and times of, and the variable personal and work connections between, arguably the three greatest American writers of the 20th Century along with anecdotes about their extraordinary adventures in and out of Hollywood. With numerous clips and slides, the lecture shows that all three men’s work was regularly adapted by other people for the cinema (and continued to be so after their deaths) and two of them, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, had varying success as screen-writers, while Hemingway and Fitzgerald have also been regularly portrayed in fictional dramas – most recently in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.
