CityLife

Carte Blanche for Comma Film

Still of Miles Platting Station directed by Kate Jessop

DESPITE celluloid’s lifelong love affair with literature, it tends to be the more weighty tomes that get the Hollywood treatment.

But a group of regional filmmakers are exploring the potential of film to render anew some award-winning poems and short stories published independently in the north west.

On Friday, April 24, The Instituto Cervantes is hosting Carte Blanche, a late-night showcase of 12 films produced as part of an on-going film project run by local short story publisher Comma Press. 

The screening is held as part of this year’s Moves Film Festival and will feature adaptations of literary works from the likes of John Cooper Clarke, Hanif Kureishi, David Constantine, Kath McKay and many others.  

Mockumentary

The films range from stop-frame animation to mockumentary, lens-less CGI to experimental drama from directors Terry Wragg, Gwendolen Osmond, Ronald Wright, Caleb Shaffer, Charlotte Caetano, James Fisher, Kate Jessop and Lisa Risbec.  

The screening will be accompanied by a live reading by Gaia Holmes, many of whose poems have also been adapted.  

Kate Jessop’s Desires, based on a poem by Holmes, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Virgin Media Shorts Prize, which will be judged later this year by a panel including Hollywood anglophile Kevin Spacey and Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha.

Short story adaptations

Comma Film is a self-initiated project founded in 2006 and devised to foster links between new filmmaking practice and writers across the region.

Comma will be commissioning three new funded short story adaptations over the summer, with this year’s output resulting in a two-day festival, ‘Version’, at the Cornerhouse in November.  

Carte Blanche will be held at The Instituto Cervantes on Deansgate at 9pm on Friday, April 24. Entry is free. For more information on Comma Film follow the link to the right of the page.