Did I post this already? Forgive me if I did... I've been doing some housecleaning and stumbled across this. ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS: Since the appearance of Maurice Tourneur's first silent film of *Victory* in 1919, more than forty versions of Conrad's works have been filmed by directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Marc Allegret, Carol Reed, Andrzej Wajda, Ridley Scott, and Francis Ford Coppola, and with stars ranging from Wallace Beery, Ronald Colman, and Jean-Louis Barrault to Peter O'Toole, Anthony Quinn, and David Carradine. These films have been discussed in reviews and articles in various literary and film journals, but it seems high time to address the many issues raised by Conrad films in a single volume. Would you be interested in contributing to a volume of essays about Conrad films? The issues to be addressed here may include (but are by no means limited to) the following: - What happens to Conrad's texts in the course of bringing them to film? How are these changes motivated? Why, for example, are Conrad's native or half-caste heroines in the Malay novels often replaced with European white women? Why do films of *Victory* always have a "happy ending" unfaithful to the original text? - What did Conrad think of the medium of film? How do the film versions of his works compare with theatrical adaptations, including those he himself prepared of *The Secret Agent*, *One Day More*, and *Laughing Anne*, or his own "film-play" scenario of "Gaspar Ruiz"? - As Conrad himself was aware, the complex ironies of his prose do not "translate" easily into film. Why does his style tend so often toward sentimental melodrama when "reduced" to its visual elements and to quoted speech? - What are some of the practical problems faced by writers, directors, and actors involved in film versions of Conrad's works, and how have they been surmounted? How has the development of film technology altered the way in which Conrad's works are presented on film? Which of the Conrad films have survived, and which are now lost? - Why is Conrad's "film canon" so different from his literary canon? Why have there been so many film versions of *Victory* (nine at last count, not to mention Harold Pinter's unfilmed screenplay), and none at all of other works including *Chance*, *The Arrow of Gold*, or "An Outpost of Progress"? - How have Conrad's films been received? How have they altered his reputation with the general public, and how have they influenced other films and other directors? Historical contributions documenting the "untold story" of Conrad films will be particularly appreciated. Contributors are encouraged to consider illustrating their contributions with still photographs, posters, or other visual or archival materials. The volume will include an up-to-date Filmography of all films known to be based on Conrad's works, together with a full Bibliography of publications discussing Conrad films. *Conrad on Film* will be published either by an academic press or in the *Conradian* series published by Rodopi in Amsterdam in connection with *The Conradian*, the journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (U.K.). Those interested in contributing are requested to submit tentative titles and brief abstracts to the editor by 10 September 1993; the final deadline for complete submissions (plus disk in IBM/WordPerfect or ASCII) will be one year later, 10 September 1994. Please address all correspondence to: Gene M. Moore, Engels Seminarium, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam, Netherlands; fax 31-20-525-3052; e-mail (internet): [log in to unmask]