This subject focuses on a number of literary works and their film adaptations. It explores the relationships between the written word and the visual image, some of the strategic decisions that film-makers must make in adapting a written form for the screen, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. It places the works in their historical and social contexts, contrasts the production of meaning in books and films, and critically explores the ideological implications of narrative form and focus in each medium.
That Eye, the Sky
Melbourne
:
McPhee Gribble
,
1986
Z426161
1986
single work
novel
young adult
(taught in 8 units)
Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. Then a strange man appears at their door. That Eye, the Sky is about love, about a boy's vision of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All this, and more, begins at the moment the ute driven by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, throwing the whole world out of kilter. (Source: Bookseller's website)
