Moving Stories brings books to life

Novelist and screenwriter Paul Quarrington has created a short film out of his book The Ravine that is now touring Canada amid a collection of short films based on literary works.

Quarrington, author of novels such as Galveston, Whale Music and King Leary, is agraduate of the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto and has written several screenplays.

His short film Pavane, like every work in the Moving Stories Film Festival, is designed to be "a little work of art on its own," Quarrington said in an interview Monday with CBC cultural affairs show Q.

"The novel, The Ravine is about two brothers, when they were kids went down into the ravine with another kid and there was an incident there involving some bigger boys and it's coloured their adult life," said Quarrington.

He couldn't hope to tell the full story of The Ravine in a five-minute short.

Instead he set out to capture the essense of the bookusinganimation to show the ravine incident and a scene of the brothers together using real-life actors Ted Dykstra and Geraint Wyn-Davies.

"I came up with the idea that the incident could be portrayed with animation it affects the creepiness level,"Quarrington said.

Pavane is meant to be both a teaser for the book and a short film that stands on its own."I think the big thing is response. It's sort of the beginning of a conversation about the book," Quarrington said from Banff, where he showed the film this weekend.

"There were quite a few people who said 'I was really intrigued by the Book Short' and they bought the novel so that's exactly what one would like to happen."

Book Shorts is a program started by Judith Keenan to adapt books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction into short films.

Other books adapted include non-fiction work This Hour Has Seven Decades by Patrick Watson, Night Work: A Sawchuk Poem from the poetry of Randall Maggs and novel Jpod by Douglas Coupland.

Twelve Book Shorts films are showing together as the Moving Images Festivalat book festivals across Canada.

The festival will be in Ottawa onWednesday, Vancouver this Saturday and in Toronto in November and later move into libraries and onto TV.

Quarrington was the only writer who adapted his own work.

"There's two choices you can say 'I'm going to endeavour to have some control over the process of adaptation' or 'I'm going to just wipe my hands clean and walk away.' I've always like trying to help with the adaptation," he told Q.

"You know, writing is a very solitary occupation and it's fun to get out of the house and work with other people. So in film, you can never have total control. You're always working with other people and hoping they're bringing a lot to the project."

Quarrington, whoadapted his own novel Whale Music for the screen, is in the process of creating a full-length script for The Ravine.