County Adaptation Film Festival

Special screening and announcement at the Regent Theatre

The inaugural County Adaptation Film Festival (CAFF) will take place at the end of September, and there will be a special screening and announcement at the Regent Theatre on Saturday, May 4. The film to be shown on Saturday is The Peasants, based on the novel of the same name (Chłopi in Polish) written by Władysław Reymont, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this work in 1924. The movie was directed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, who also directed Loving Vincent, and like that movie also uses a painted animation technique. Initially, the present film was shot with actors. Over 100 artists in four studios in Poland, Ukraine Lithuania and Serbia then painted oil paintings based on movie stills that became frames in the film. Animators were subsequently used to seamlessly blend those frames together. The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. “The reason that we chose to this film to open our festival is because it really pushes that dialogue around what is an adaptation, and because it takes live action and converts it to oil paintings and then converts the oil paintings to animation, so there are three different entry points to that conversation about what makes an adaptation,” said Alexandra Seay, Artistic Director of the Regent Theatre. The film will have a virtual introduction from its directors (from Poland) and one of the visual effects artists, Monika Folkierska- Zukowska, will be on stage for a post show Q&A. The film screening is sponsored by Oeno Gallery, the Royal Hotel and Karlo Estates Winery. Seven paintings used as the animation frames will be on display at the theatre.

The evening will also be the launch event for the CAFF, where the schedule and key partners will be announced. There will also be a programming announcement, but the full program and tickets will not be available until mid-June. “The County Animation Film Festival is a festival entirely dedicated to the art of adaptation. Its goal is to foreground the work of screenwriters in the creative process. Adaptation is an art, in and of itself, and our festival shines a light on that process,” said Ms. Seay. In addition to screenings at the Regent there will also be events held across the County, making it a truly County-wide festival.

The Regent continues to offer a wide variety of entertainment. The Independent Cinema series (Mustang Monday) continues until May 13, with a screening of the closing film With Love and a Major Organ, which will be followed by a Q&A with the screenwriter and Jeremy Smith. There will be a co-production with the Jazz Festival during the summer and Ms. Seay said the fall will be “Very exciting— details to follow.” The County Stage Company will be partnering with the Regent in a tribute to singer Michael Bublé called Feeling Bublé. For more information, please visit theregenttheatre.org.