Lithuanian Kin: The Birth of Adaptation out of the Spirit of Community
Abstract
To Tadeusz Konwicki, the relationship between the author of a literary text and the author of a film based on the text consists in the “Platonic community of interests”. Here the adaptor uses a classic text not because he has to or has received a commission to adapt it but because it’s the text he feels particularly attached to and because in it he finds the elements of what he himself would like to put into the original. Lubelski analyses Konwicki’s creative activity from the point of view of the latter’s love affair with adaptation, and focuses primarily on The Issa Valley, based on Czesław Miłosz’s novel, and Lava, based on Adam Mickiewicz’s The Forefathers’ Eve. Spiritual affinity between Konwicki, Mickiewicz and Miłosz is the key to understanding of his adaptation strategy. The three had roots in the culture of eastern borderland while the Vilnius region was their point of reference. When translating the language of poets into a cinematic medium, Konwicki wanted to share his own “testimony of reading” which was very private, intimate and offered by the fellow artist. The “comradeship” appeared to derive from the metaphorical understanding of Lithuanian kinship that is becoming a state of mind, of memory and identity. [originally published in Polish in Kwartalnik Filmowy 2007, no. 59, pp. 147-172]
Keywords:
Lithuania, Tadeusz Konwicki, Adam Mickiewicz, Czesław MiłoszReferences
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Authors
Tadeusz Lubelskikwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Film historian and critic, since 2007 he holds the highest academic position of Ordinary Professor; from 2008 to 2012 Director of the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow), he currently heads the Chair of the History of Polish Film at this Institute. He specialises in the history of Polish film and European cinematographies, with particular focus on French cinema. His books include: Poetyka powieści i filmów Tadeusza Konwickiego [The Poetics of Tadeusz Konwicki’s Novels and Films] (1984), Strategie autorskie w polskim filmie fabularnym lat 1945-1961 [Authorial Strategies in Polish Fiction Film 1945-1961] (1992, 2nd ed.: 2000), Kino Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego [The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski] (ed. 1997), Nowa Fala. O pewnej przygodzie kina francuskiego [The New Wave: About a Certain Adventure of French Cinema] (2000), Encyklopedia kina [Encyclopedia of Cinema] (ed. 2003, 2nd ed.: 2010), Wielkie tematy w kinie przełomu wieków [Grand Themes in the Cinema of the Turn of the Century] (ed. 2004), Wajda (2006), Agnès Varda kinopisarka [Agnès Varda the Cine-Writer] (ed. 2006), Historia kina polskiego. Twórcy, filmy, konteksty [History of Polish Cinema: Authors, Films, Contexts] (2009), Historia kina – vol. I: Kino nieme [History of the Cinema, vol. I: Silent Cinema] (2009) and vol. II: Kino klasyczne [Classic Cinema] (2011) – co-editor with Iwona Sowińska and Rafał Syska, Kino polskie jako kino narodowe [Polish Cinema as a National Cinema] (2009, co-ed. with Maciej Stroiński), Historia niebyła kina PRL [The Unhappened History of the Cinema of the People’s Republic of Poland] (2012). As a translator, he published Alexander Vertynsky’s Romanse i poematy [Romances and Poems] (1996), Hitchcock/Truffaut (2005), and Miron Chernenko’s Bliska zagranica. Szkice filmowe o Polakach i dla Polaków [The Close Abroad: Film Sketches on Poles and for Poles] (2007). Member of the Committee on Art Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, member of the European Film Academy; Chair of the Programme Board of Krakow Film Festival (since 2003). From 1994 to 2006 Deputy Chief Editor of Kino monthly. Member of the Scientific Editorial Board of Kwartalnik Filmowy and the Polish Film Institute’s educational programme “School Film Library”.
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