March 13, 2013

Novel-to-Screen Film Festival comes to New York in April

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Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita will be one of the three films featured at the Novel-to-Screen Film Festival next month.

If you’re looking for a literary event that will also appeal to film buffs, next month the National Book Foundation is teaming up with the Pratt Institute for the Novel-to-Screen Film Festival. The festival will feature three films over the course of two days, each of them based on a novel that was nominated for the National Book Award. The festival will be held at Pratt on West 14th St. in New York on April 4-5.

The first movie shown (at 6:30 PM on Thursday, April 4) will be Lolita, based on the Vladimir Nabokov novel and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The seminal book was nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1959; Nabokov is credited with writing the Oscar-winning screenplay as well, though Kubrick and producer James Harris significantly edited and rewrote his contribution. NBF executive director Harold Augenbraum—Executive Director of the NBF, and a professor of Latino literature and author of several books on the subject—will moderate a panel discussion following the screening of the film.

The next day (Friday, April 5) will feature two movies, starting with Hugo at 3:30 PM. Based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, the film that celebrates the early days of cinema was adapted in 2011 by director Martin Scorsese. The screenplay by John Logan won the Oscar for adapted screenplay, and the book was nominated for the National Book Award in the Young People’s Literature category back in 2007. The panel discussion on Hugo will be led by Peter Patchen, Pratt’s Chairperson of Digital Arts.

At 6:30 PM, the festival will conclude with The Cool World, based on a 1960 novel written by Warren Miller that was nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction that same year. The book was turned into a play in 1960 as well, before being adapted for the screen by Shirley Clarke and Carl Lee, who also stars in the movie, in 1964. Telling the story of life in a youth gang in Harlem, it’s shot to look somewhat like a documentary, and stars several actual gang members. Ethan Spigland, Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt, will be moderating the panel discussion after the film.

If you’re interested in checking out any of these films, you can see the full details on the festival and how to RSVP—it’s free and open to the public, but with limited seats—on the NBF website.

 

Nick Davies is a publicist at Melville House.

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