From Book To The Screen was the session in progress and in conversation were Marta Dzido, Selja Ahava, Delphine Lehericey and Amish Tripathi. Ahava was the winner of European Union Prize for Literature in 2016 and has sold translation rights for 25 territories; Marta Dzido is an award-winning writer and a film-maker; Delphine Lehericey is an actor and director of Swiss origin; and Amish Tripathi is India’s well-known author of The Shiva Trilogy, which is the fastest-selling book series in Indian publishing.
Marking 25 years of the EU Film Festival (EUFF) in India, this was an online session where writers and film directors spoke about the difficulties and promises of adapting a book to a film. Amish’s latest book, Legend Of Suheldev, has already been commissioned into a film by his own new production agency in Mumbai we found out during the course of the enlightening session. We say ‘enlightening’ because it was greatly important to discuss the emotional turmoil involved in cutting their book to fit the brevity of a film that is to be screened in a theatre.
What all the panelists had in common was that they had written for or understood the process of writing and the nuances that changed when you wrote for a particular format. They were joined by writers Valerio Caruso, Rie Alkemade and festival curators Veronica Flora and Carlo D’Ursi.
The conversation began by remembering the masters such as Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick, who have all made classic films from books. Control was a recurring theme in the conversation as the authors were unanimous that they felt more in control of the narrative in a book, which was solely their creation, as opposed to a film, which had participants sharing the load and credit of the final product.
“The thing that I love about writing my novels is that it is my own work from the very start to the very end. I feel a lot more freer when compared to films,” said Ahava, the author and director from Finland.
Lehericey, the writer and director from Switzerland, agreed. “A film is a collective effort whereas a book is like living the single life,” she said. And Carlo D’Ursi added, “And making a movie is a bit of promiscuity!”
Speaking on the decision to produce his own movie, Amish spoke about being a control freak and how various attempts at making movies based on his books had previously failed. “There was an idea where I thought of producing my own movie. If I can control it, maybe I will be a lot more committed to it, and here we are,” he said. Legend Of Suheldev, his epic novel on the king who fought the Battle of Bahraich, is their first project.
Dzido spoke about writing films and the opposite end of the same challenge, where she has to think about the best possible way to take the pages of a book and transpose it into a visual scene in films. “My novel is told from two different perspectives, of man and woman. It’s not common to tell a story through this narrative strategy. Maybe even find a new language to tell this story,” she said of her ‘hyper-textual experience of writing a novel’.
Time was also of great essence in this session as Amish spoke at length about the need of time in an author’s life. “You have to edit a lot when you make a book into a movie, so much so that you lose the soul. I love the concept of series on the OTT platforms now because then we get the best gift that we writers can get, which is the gift of time,” he said. The time allowed only helps in lending depth to characters and building a storyline with the details it deserves.
So, is the future of film-making going to be in series format when it translates from a book? With entrants like A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, one might have to agree with the panelists.
Readers can explore the European Union Film Festival’s social media pages for more information on the festival and these compelling sessions.
