screening the novel
Books into Films
7 July 2027
Digby hall , hound street, sherborne at 3 pm and 7 pm
Gone with the Wind
Pride and Prejudice
David Copperfield
The Godfather 1971
How do you turn a huge sprawling novel like Gone with the Wind into a film to be seen in one evening? Why do some novels make the transition so much better than others? Is there any difference between adaptation of Pride and Predudice and any of the others? From Dickens to Austen the classic novels constantly reappear as movies but this lecture moves from All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930 through the social realism of the post-war British novel to The Godfather in 1971.
Colin Shindler
Colin Shindler has been lecturing on American and British social and cultural history forover 30 years. He was awarded his PhD at Cambridge University and subsequentlylectured on film for their History Faculty between 1998 and 2019 exploring itsrelationship to modern British and American social and cultural history. He also teaches avariety of adult education courses at Madingley and Higham Hall in Cumbria and haslectured on cruises. Between 1975 and 1999 he pursued a wide – ranging career as a writerand producer in television, radio and film. He won a BAFTA award for his productionof A Little Princess . His production of Young Charlie Chaplin was nominated for a USPrime Time Emmy. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Buster and was theproducer of various television dramas such as Lovejoy and Wish Me Luck . He has writtenthree novels as well as numerous television scripts and radio plays but regards his greatestcultural contribution as choosing the title music for the police series Juliet Bravo. Hismost recent radio play to be broadcast on Radio 4 was Leni Goes to Hollywood, about theGerman film director Leni Riefenstahl. Other radio plays for R4 included How To Be AnInternee (about P.G. Wodehouse) and one on Private Eye & The ProfumoAffair (Rumours). He is the author of Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches: TheControversial South Africa Cricket Tour of 1970 which was short listed for theMCC/Wisden Cricket Book of the Year in 2021. He is best known for his childhoodmemoir Manchester United Ruined My Life which was short listed for the William HillSports Book of the Year Award. His other publications include Hollywood Goes To War:Films & American Society 1939 – 1952 and Hollywood in Crisis: Films & American Society1929- 1939. His next book is called Boom!: The Story of a Generation