Adaptations/Variations

'During a recent study of contemporary Australian film adaptations, I discovered that, generally speaking, apart from using obvious filmic devices, there are four main ways film-makers approach adapting a literary or theatrical text. They make faithful versions; they vary elements in the source, making significant changes and therefore a variation on the original text; they appropriate the source to create a film radically different from the original; or they choose to intersect with the ancestral text, making no significant changes but systematically and methodically transforming literary or theatrical features into cinematic tropes that 'play'. Denise Faithfull examines the Australian tradition of film adaptation, covering such films as 'Turtle Beach', 'Cosi', 'The Delinquents', 'In the Winter Dark' and 'The Boys'.