Croeso i drafodaeth 'da fi ar y we, gyda newyddion cerddoriaeth, ffilmiau, barddoniaeth, ffuglen, dramau, a storiau byr y Gymru. Welcome to my online symposium, your one source for news and reviews about new and old, Welsh Music, Film, Poetry, Fiction, Dramas, and Short Stories. A (mostly) English language forum of Minority Celtic Language, Culture & Politics in Music and Film.
United Kingdom Literacy Association regional conference:
Time to Talk: Time to Write
Monday 24th September, Mason’s Arms, Cardiff
9.30am – 3.30pm
Speakers:
Daniel Morden: Internationally renowned storyteller and prize- winning author. Daniel works extensively in schools and has developed classroom resources to help teachers use narrative effectively.
Hamish Fyfe: Hamish Fyfe has worked as a teacher, actor, and researcher in a variety of contexts, before taking up his post as Chair of Arts in the Community at the University of Glamorgan.
His interests include digital storytelling with adults and children, an innovative way of exploring personal stories.
The speakers will be examining ways to engage children with narratives, both traditional and personal, and using oracy and digital technology to present these narratives.
This is a wonderful opportunity for quality CPD for all teachers interested in developing children’s self-esteem, emotional literacy, communication and presentation skills and use of new technologies across the primary phase.
Cost: UKLA members: £90 Non- members: £115
This includes lunch and refreshments.
School membership at £47.50 entitles two teachers to attend at member prices and the school will also receive three copies of Literacy, Literacy News and English 4-11 each year of membership. For parties of three or more special prices will also apply.
For further details please email jrharrett@beeb.net or ring Jacqui Harrett on 02920480442, 59 Egremont Road, Cardiff CF23 5LP. Numbers are limited so please book as soon as possible. Special rates for three or more attending from one school.
Emily Underwood
T: 01443 668631
E: efunderw@glam.ac.uk http://www.glam.ac.uk/storytelling George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling
Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, ATRiuM, University of Glamorgan, Adam Street, Cardiff, CF24 2XF
Canolfan Adrodd Storïau George Ewart Evans
Ysgol Diwydiannau Creadigol a Diwylliannol Caerdydd, ATRiuM, Prifysgol Morgannwg, Stryd Adam, Caerdydd, CF24 2XF
[Pictured above: Welsh Mountain scenery and new state-of-the-art film and television studios are expected to lure productions to Wales.]
The BBC is reporting that the long-delayed Welsh film and television studios project in South Wales started last week, after almost six frustrating years of set-backs and delays.
"The first stage of the £330m development will be built at Llanilid, near Llanharan, following delays caused by sewerage problems and bad weather."
"Developers said the initial phase of the Dragon International Ltd plan would feature four film stages and work on a major access road."
"Construction on the first stage of the plan is set to finish by June 2008."
"Oscar-winning actor and director Richard Attenborough, who has been the project chairman, said in January 2006 the scheme would "build studios that have not been seen for decades throughout the world"."
"Organisers claim the sound stages and TV studios will make south Wales a centre of the UK film industry.'
A well-made short report on You Tube Video asks, "What happened to the Valleywood project? Six years ago, a consortium announced plans to build a major film studio in the Welsh Valleys, but things haven't quite gone to plan. Chris Doidge reports on the project's problems and its future":
Valleywood
The studio itself and it's related complex are expected to generate at least 1,700 new jobs at the site. Film studios and the film industry rely upon an enormous number of support vendors and suppliers and craftsmen, so there is also an anticipated positive economic impact expected over time on the entire region.
For example, the lengthy film credits at the end of every feature film, which a lot of audiences ignore, show a list of support workers, including everything from caterers, to florists to publicists to carpenters, needed to produce feature films and television products.
Wales's close proximity to London already gives it a competitive position in the UK media production market, and the lower costs in Wales when compared to southern England make Wales a logical choice for film and TV production managers.
Ultimately, the film and TV industry needs highly qualified and experienced workers in many support fields, but the bottom line of the production budget drives the choice of production studio location.
For years, U.S. and European film productions have been 'running away' to studios like Barrandov Studios (Prague) in the Czech Republic, because the costs are lower and scenery is splendid.
Wales's stands to challenge English and other European studios in their competition for film and TV productions for similar reasons.
Also, English studios are aging, built decades ago with now-obsolete technology, and are being threatened by other real estate encroachments in land-pricey southern England.
This is not the case in many parts of the South Wales Valleys, where former mining communities boost plenty of land for such development.
"The Council has worked with developers to help facilitate a start on site on 13th August."
"Four film stages for Dragon International Ltd and the provision of the western end of the major access road planned to run through the site, are the particular developments starting now."
"These form part of the major strategic development site based on the film studio's development, for which planning permission has already been granted by the Council."
"Considerable work has been completed over the past few months, with the Council working with Cofton Wales and Dragon International to make sure that all the planning conditions have been properly dealt with. Progress has been good."
"It is anticipated that the work on site will run through until next year with an expected substantial completion in June 2008."
Cllr Russell Roberts says “ I am delighted that we will soon see buildings coming out of the ground at Llanilid. The Council granted planning permission some time ago for this site, but it will be great to see the development kick started now with the Silent Stages and the other major infrastructure works.”
"Extraordinary plans were unveiled by executive chairman Lord Attenborough in 2001 a world class ultra-large state of the art movie studio complex as part of a development including movie-based leisure attractions and an international film academy, some parts to be completed by 2006 (now early 2008 and overall finish hopefully by 2010)."
"Cofton Wales, specialists in large-scale brownfield land regeneration, has announced that construction work will start at Llanilid, near Llanharan, on Monday 13th August."
"The planned work comprises two separate projects; the first is the construction of four film stages for Dragon International Studios and the second project is an artery road to service the first phase of a mixed-use commercial development."
"The scheme was granted outline planning permission by local authority Rhondda Cynon Taff in December 2003 and includes consent for a business park, hotel and leisure facilities in addition to the film studios."
mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.
James's is well known for his pivotal role in the development of the Welsh Media Journal Cyfrwng.
His research interests included Media History, History in the Media, Public and Media Mourning, British Politics and the Media, Welsh Media, Media and Monarchy, Media Power.
His articles and books spanned from explorations of anti-Welsh attitudes in the media to 'The Case for a Bi-lingual S4C'.
Many of his dear friends and students and colleagues are in a state of shock.
A special memorial page has been setup on Face Book and has this recent news:
FaceBook Group Info Name: Remembering James Thomas
Description: A group to remember the wonderful James Thomas, who has passed away much too early. We wanted to create an informal place where his friends, colleagues and students can remember him -- please post your memories, pictures, thoughts or anything else...
Recent News:
Dr James Thomas just passed away. He died suddenly, in his sleep, from a massive cerebral hemorrhage. The funeral will be this Friday, 24th August, at 10.15 am in St. Andrew's Church, Tonypandy and the burial will follow at 11am at Treorchy Cemetery.
Any cards can be given to Mr Huw Thomas in the JOMEC main office. He will ensure that they are passed on to the family.
Can any good thing come out of Pontypridd? Well, when it comes to music, just ask music icon Sir Tom Jones. Or maybe ask the Pontypridd band, BenSem . . .
Totally Lost Control is a music event at the Cardiff Bay Millenium Centre this weekend, one of the last 'end-of-summer' events you don't want to miss.
My University of Glamorgan colleague Chris Hughes is not only a band member, but he's mostly responsible for throwing this enormous rock and popular music event.
The event will benefit the Toby Lloyd Cockbain Foundation, which helps children with cancer in Wales. The bands will play from noon until midnight, and not surprisingly, Cardiff School of Creative Industries music students are among the band members.
For example, don't miss the headliner BenSem. The BBC Music website says this:
"Friends since the age of 11, Pontypridd's Semmens and Rawbone have been playing music together since 2000, and have now got together a band they feel they can take out on the road."
"Cook and Jones joined in 2006, and their soft indie rock (think the likes of Del Amitri or Crowded House as starting points) came together quickly."
"We're a family," they say. "We're not concerned with today's stylised music industry, BenSem want to concentrate on bringing back what matters most: great music and strong songs played with heart and soul.
A thriving community of artists have recently established a network, based in the town of Pontypridd, with a large number of new sculpture, painting, films and new media works to show, the artists have seized the opportunity to transform a number of vacant shop units in the Taff Vale Shopping Centre and the Muni Arts Centre into multi-media gallery spaces for this first ever ‘All Over the Shop’ festival of visual art.
Preview opening:
25th August 12 noon at Muni Arts Centre Gelliwasted Rd., Pontypridd
25th August 1 pm at Taff Vale Shopping Centre, Taff Street, Pontypridd
mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.
It has been estimated that an overwhelming percentage of Welsh films and television dramas are intentionally based upon other literary sources.
This overwhelming dependence upon literary adaptation is primarily from important Welsh literary or cultural sources. This suggests an attempt to ‘recall and recollect’ and to re-‘write the nation’, after a period of suppressed or neglected representations of Welsh-ness.
While Dave Berry’s book and other studies have attributed this Welsh dependence upon literary adaptation as ‘laziness’ (Berry 1994: 234), we see it as being related to issues of post-colonial ‘re-telling’ of a national story, or more related to the economics of production.
For example, Stephen Bayly directed Joni Jones (1982) as a well-received television series for S4C, an adaptation based upon the well-known children’s stories by R. Garallt Jones entitled Gwared y Gwirion or ‘Redemption of the Innocents’.
It is often the case in Wales, that directors will create a series which is actually suited to be converted into a feature film at a later date, should the funding and political will be present to effect the re-formatting.
Additionally, one of Wales's most famous sons is Andrew Davies, who is known around the world as the 'Prince of Adaptation'.
Andrew Wynford Davies (born September 20, 1936 in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales) is a British screenwriter.
He is the creator of the children's Marmalade Atkins television series and A Very Peculiar Practice, and is also well known for his adaptations of classic works of literature, including the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle and the 1998 adaptation of Vanity Fair.
Literary and stage adaptations have added clout with film production investors, who assume that a successful novel or stage play will naturally make a successful film.
Some screenwriters have been known to 'invent' a novel AFTER writing a film script, for purposes of marketing the film, and for raising venture capital.
In small nations, broadcasting drama department Commissioning Editors often opt for an adaptation. This satisfies several remits: nationalistic and cultural agendas are fulfilled, while it's assumed that an established audience exists for the new film or TV series.
My favorite book on film and literature in general is Tom Corrigan's 'Film & Literature' (1999, Prentic Hall Inc / Simon & Schuster).
Here's a pleasant Youtube tribute to Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice:
'Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature' (Paperback) by John Desmond (Author), Peter Hawkes (Author) is concise and readable new text for courses in Film Adaptation or Film and Literature introduces students to the art of adapting works of literature for film.
'Adaptation' describes the interwoven histories of literature and film, presents key analytical approaches to adaptation, and provides an in-depth overview of adaptations of novels, short stories, plays, nonfiction, and animation.
The book concludes with an analysis of why adaptations sometimes fail.
mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.
Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.
Pictured above, a vicolo piccolino tipico in the Molisano Medieval mountain fortress cittadina (walled-city) of Guglionesi, where the language of 'Wee-yonn-naish-shon' is spoken, not Italian.
Guglionesi possibly derives from Colle di Nyseus, or Hill of Bachus, a mix of Latin with the ancient Samnite Italinate language.
The local dialect is a pure version of Frentani-Uscosium, which stretches from Vasto in the north to Puglia in the south.
[Dw i'n wedi ymweld yr Eidal gyda fy Mhartner Eidaleg y penwythnos diwethaf, yn y brofins o'r enw Molise, gyda dair daleithiau o' enw Campobasso ac Isernia (canolau taliethiol Rhufeinaidd). Dw i' mynd ar ol dros mis Awst.]
I'm doing a bit of summer research 'field work' in Molise, which is the centre of the Samnite dialects, which are cousins of Latin in the Italic family of Indo-European.
With all the fresh melone and prosciutto, to avoid putting on an extra stone, I am jogging every morning and taking the local 'passiaggiata' every night, that is, walking along tops of this walled city, which is perched atop a mountain 1,000 feet above the Adriatic.
No one speaks English for many miles around here. I have walked each night along the crumbling ramparts as I learn another (yes another) minority language from the chatty WWII pensioners and widows in black hose and scarves . . .
The Samnites were conquerered by the Romans in 290 B.C., since their nation was located directly over the Appennine Mountains, hugging the Adriactic, and apparently Rome lusted for the fertile vineyards, olives and girasole (sunflower) fields of the Montane di Sannita'.
The curious Samnite dialects, which are mostly comprehensible to an Italian speaker, first caught my attention when I read the philologist Dottore Mario Pei's famous book, 'The Story of Language' in 1975.
Pei points out that Celtic language scholars once thought the Samnites might have a connection to Gaulish, Welsh, Breizh or Irish, since the Osco-Umbrium borderland dialects have mutations and other traits which are similar to modern Welsh, etc.
The connection has been rejected, but the similarity has never been effectively explained, at least not without detractors, who assert a Celtic connection, going back to the 3rd century B.C.E.
What's curious is that the people of Molise, in relatively rural and economically-impoverished ancestral centres like the medival fortress city of Guglionesi, are continuing to speak and teach their language (whose written form predates Christ by at least 250 years) to their children, even without the help or support of any 'national' language boards.
This is my third visit to Molise, and I have started to compile a dictionary and grammar of their language, which they insist is only a 'dialect' of Italian.
But my casual study reveals a grammar and sophisticated vocabulary that is distinct from Italian, and which parallels the history of people who still consider themselves a separate 'paese' or country, not to be confused with the official Italian culture and language, based upon the Tuscan vernacular of Italian, albeit the local "diletto's" displacement by Latin and then Italian is post-colonial dating from Republican Rome).
I met with several prominent scholars last week, and tracked down numerous 'dialetto' books and music CDS, etc. There is a dictionary of sorts, which I've ordered, but I noticed that the phonetic rendering uses Latin or Roman letters, which neglect to indicate the distinctive aspirate or unsounded consonantal stops and words, i.e., d t t tr is pronunced duh-tuh-t-ya-truh, and is an anagram of a related Latin or Italian phrase.
Era fatto in Sicilia, si, pero' solomente per essempio, guarda Lei questo film con l'Italiano proprio e il dialetto siciliano nello film famoso, 'il Postino' (1994):
I located a film festival in Molise, which I hope will lead me to indigenous tv and filmic product in the this 'non-language' national language of the people of Guglionesi and nearby towns and cities, along the Adriatic Sea.
In Guglionesi itself, there is a media school which is producing an annual children's film fest 'Friends' which celebrates the local language in video and film, and which features local folk singers and dialect 'rappers'.
The studio is called 'ARS IDEA STUDIO' located on Via Roma across from the Chiesa Maria Maggiore (crypt and presbytery circa IX-X centuries) which you can find here:
