Version Festival

About The Project

Version is a continuation of various adaptation projects coordinated over the last two years by Literature Northwest and Comma Film – the audio-visual strand of Manchester’s award-winning Comma Press

The aim of these projects has always been to nurture an appreciation of narrative among developing filmmakers and to reassert the importance of the writer in the filmmaking process. Young directors and animators have been encouraged to engage directly with literary texts at the start of their careers – an opportunity not normally open to them because of publishing and authorial copyright. As a publisher, Comma has been able to bypass this obstacle by negotiating author permissions as part of the commissioning process, not only among its own authors but – through Literature Northwest, a network of independent publishers – among authors from across the region.

The process has been a two-tier one. Comma began by commissioning a series of short ‘poem-films’: 1-5min visual realisations of unabridged poems, read or performed by actors or the poets themselves. These were coordinated as a series of low or no-budget ‘challenges’ in conjunction with smaller festivals in the Northwest. More recently Comma has stepped up the process, working with the best of the poem-film directors to develop longer short story adaptations (5-20min films).

The best of this initial work has been brought together for the first time, alongside a raft of new challenge films and four specially funded short story commissions, for the first edition of Version.

With the support of our sponsors, Comma plans to continue the project, year on year, as an escalator for finding and promoting filmmaking talent; commissioning new directors and animators to adapt poems, at first, and then moving them onto short stories. To this end, Version is hosting a series of networking sessions during the first festival to give directors, producers, DoPs, sound recordists and other crew members the opportunity to meet, plan new projects, and work towards films for next year’s festival.

See How To Take Part for more details

Previous Films

Appearances and awards for Comma’s adaptations to date:

When the Telescope Came, Kate Jessop

Winner – London Short Film Festival Femme Fantastique Prize

Desires, Kate Jessop

Shortlisted – Virgin Media Prize, 2008
Best of Birds Eye View (March 07)
Film de Femme (Paris, March 07)
Britspotting (Berlin, April 07)
St John’s International Film Festival (Canada, Oct 07).
WIFTI (Women in Film and Television International) touring programme in over 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, International Women’s Day, Mar 08.

Archaeology, Lisa Risbec

Magma Film Festival, Sicily, Sep 08
Bochum International VideoFest, Germany July 09

Five Miles Out, Andrew Haigh

Berlin Film Festival, Feb 09
Edinburgh Film Festival, Aug 09
Nashville Film Festival
Atlanta Film Festival
Viewfinders, Nova Scotia
Maryland Film Festival
Mediawave, Hungary

The Dogs, Ronald Wright

Portobello Film Festival, London, Sep 09
Leeds International Film Festival, Nov 09

The Loss, Kate Jessop

Brancharge Film Festival, Oct 09
Raindance Film Festival, Oct 09

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