Book Club: Adaptation

Book Club: Adaptation

Book Club
Sun
7
Sun 7 Dec 1:00 PM

Arc Cinema
Allocated Seating
2002 | DCP | US | D: Spike Jonze  

This event begins at 1:00 pm with a pre-screening conversation featuring Siang Lu in discussion with critic Beejay Silcox about the film Adaptation and the novel that inspired it. An intermission, including book sales and signings in the NFSA Foyer, will follow at 1:45 pm. The film screening of Adaptation will then commence at 2:00 pm.

BOOK CLUB AT THE NFSA IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CANBERRA WRITERS FESTIVAL 

Meta narratives abound in this self-reflective film about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), who’s trying to adapt Susan Orlean’s (played by Meryl Streep) non-fiction book The Orchid Thief for the screen.  

As Charlie writes, he finds he’s putting himself into the script, not to mention his twin brother Donald (also played by Cage), who’s successfully writing a screenplay using the Hollywood formula Charlie is trying to avoid. 

“Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic.” – Rolling Stone 

ABOUT SIANG LU
Siang Lu is the Miles Franklin Award-winning author of Ghost Cities and ABIA Award-winning author of The Whitewash. He co-created The Beige Index, a ‘Bechdel Test’ for race, exploring ethnic representation on the IMDb Top 250 Films, and created #sillybookstagram, an Instagram page dedicated to Siang playfully defacing books by his author friends.

Ghost Cities was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal, the Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the VPLA John Clarke Humour Award, the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize, the University of Queensland Fiction Book Award and The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year at the Queensland Literary Awards. Siang lives between Brisbane, Australia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

ABOUT BEEJAY SILCOX
Beejay Silcox is a writer and book critic renowned for her resolute (some might say, foolhardy) honesty. In addition to her writing, Beejay works as a professional reader: she's a literary interviewer, festival programmer, editor and prize judge. She has stories to tell. Beejay eloped to Las Vegas, escaped from quicksand, and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap. She once had to be rescued – unironically – from a picnic at Hanging Rock.

Adaptation © 2002 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

Arc Cinema

1 McCoy Circuit Acton, Australian Capital Territory, 2601