'From Page to Stage or Screen' - a two-day Masterclass with Peter Goldsworthy & Jill Jolliffe

On 12-13 November 2013, The J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide will present a 2-day Masterclass for writers. Participants will have the rare opportunity to work with two outstanding and award winning writers who have had their work adapted for the stage and screen.

Day 1 - Tuesday 12 November 2013:

Which was better - the book or the film? with Peter Goldsworthy
What is gained and what is lost in adapting a novel for the stage? An examination of the techniques - and the hazards - of adapting fiction to the stage or screen, using a wide range of examples ranging from Goldsworthy's own work to Mario Puzo's The Godfather, and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, with perhaps a little Jane Austen or James Bond thrown in.

Peter Goldsworthy AM is a novelist, poet, short story writer and librettist, whose work has won many awards, including the Christina Stead Award [for literature], the Robert Helpmann Award [for Best Opera & Best New Australian Work], and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. His novel Maestro was voted one of the 'Top 40 Australian books of all time' by members of the Australian Society of Authors. Peter's class will focus adapting fiction to the stage or screen.

Day 2 - Wednesday 13 November 2013:

Transformations - from guerrilla warfare to the screen with Jill Jolliffe
Veteran foreign correspondent Jill Jolliffe will analyse her experience as a pragmatic filmmaker directing behind the lines of East Timor's 24-year resistance war against Indonesia and in exposing urban violence by Mafia-style traffickers of women in Spain and Portugal in the 1990s. She will discuss the transformation of her 2009 book Balibo to screen and the ethical dilemmas raised in the relationship between writers and commercial filmmakers. She will also describe the work of The Living Memory Project, a video archival project to preserve the experiences of Timorese torture survivors.

Jill Jolliffe is a journalist, film maker and author, renowned for her reporting on East Timor since 1975. She is the author of Balibo [Scribe Publications, 2009], on which the film of the same name is based, and has directed various documentaries and television news reports, including Blockade sponsored by SBS, and was involved in Child Slaves, a major BBC documentary. In 2006 she received the Yale Globalist Journalist of the Year Award for her reporting on human rights issues. Jill's class will focus on the book-to-screen process in the making of Balibo, and the genesis of the film The Pandora Trail, a documentary on the trafficking of women into prostitution.

Cost: Free event. Morning tea provided.
Dates: Tuesday November 12 & Wednesday November 13, 2013
Times: 9:30am-4:00pm each day
Venue: The University of Adelaide, North Terrace Campus, Adelaide.