4th of July!

(Above: the boating party listen to the story of Alice,  Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) Dir: Barry Letts)

Today officially marks so called "Alice's day" (Or at least, that's what Oxford calls it now) when, in 1862, Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll started to tell the Alice stories to the Liddell sisters and Robinson Duckworth on Oxford boating trips. This by Karoline Leach:

Summer of  1862.  Charles Dodgson  is telling the ‘Alice’  story to the three famous sisters, Ina, Alice and Edith Liddell,  while  on their famous river-trips.  Indications are the girls  loved  the tale and were always begging for new instalments, but that Dodgson was less enthusiastic (on one occasion he calls  it the ‘interminable’ Alice’s Adventures, and is peeved because he wants to sing them a new song he just made up instead). At around the same time Alice asks him to write her story down. He promises he will do so.

 Whilst the actual writing of the story would take Dodgson over 6 months to start, the germ of what would become Alice's adventures Underground and, world famous as Alice's adventures in Wonderland, indeed started on these boating trips between friends, the story's episodic structure reflects this, as do the in jokes made for the 4 listeners of the tale. Even if Dodgson was less enamoured with having to continually come back to the Alice story and add extra episodes. The world is forever glad he did! 

(Above: The Three Liddell sisters, 1864, Lorina (seated) Alice (Left) and Edith (right) captured in the artwork The Sisters by Sir William Blake Richmond)

Today's recommendation is Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) which begins at this very first storytelling boating trip, on the 4th of July. Kate Dorning plays a dual role in this version. She plays both a quiet Alice Liddell, and a delighfully eccentric, wild Alice. For once the two look different, perhaps reflecting that Dodgson never saw his fictional creation as actually being Alice Liddell herself!

Of course Alice160 celebrations will be all year round this year, but the epicentre, as always, is Oxford. Alice's day celebrations are tomorrow there.  If you can't make it, there's a whole list of events worldwide that I've curated here, including at home options. For reading recommendations, I VERY much recommend Macmillan's complete Alice for English language readers, and Jenny Woolf's biography the Mystery of Lewis Carroll (originally published 2010) which is available in English and Japanese editions.

Whichever way you decide to celebrate, have a wonderful July 4th, and July!

Alice160: New Carrollianism in Film/TV

 

This post is part 1 of 2 discussing Alice160, and its cultural relevance, as well as future relevance. This part examines cinema and upcoming/new visions of Alice in Cinema. Part 2 will discuss legacy of Carroll, current legacy, and possible ways to increase engagement.

This is a post I've wanted to write for a while after seeing quite a lot of new Alice films pop up at film festivals and elsewhere relatively recently :)

After an obliterating 20 year gap of adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, outside of the 2010 films which didn't adapt the books, and TV specials of filmed theatre, cinema and TV finally heralded a new interest in 2020/2021 with Carroll's works. All directed by independent filmmakers, this new group of films we can include:  Daniel Leite Almeida 's Alice in Backlands, Giulia Grandinetti's Alice and the Land that Wonders, Fabrício Bittar's Alice in the Internet, and Adam Donen's Alice Through the Looking. 

 Releases specifically upcoming for this year of Alice160 will be Toshiya Shinohara and PA Works's anime Dive in Wonderland, and Yuriy Khmelnitskiy's musical Alisa v Strane Chudes. These are both non traditional adaptations and so could be added to the above list.

These films are all disparate, appealing to different audiences, and demographics, and using Carroll's texts for  different ends. Sometimes these films have shades of politics, sometimes they put 2020s lifestyle under a microscope by using carroll's work as a lens, but always they are startlingly original. Not every project from this list is out commercially yet (and some were seen for a limited time) but this short list shores up interest by screenwriters and directors in Carroll's work for the first time in a long while.

Because the 1999 TV film got such a mixed critical reaction upon airing, and related to this, the 2016 in name only attempt by Disney getting such a disastrous reception, it is noticeable that many "new" alices from the above list make a point aesthetically and artistically by choosing the opposite choices to Disney's 2010 duology or 1999's spectacle. Spectacle in big budget visual effects, big ticket million dollar actors, and CGI landscapes. None of the new films since 2020 place Alice and her dreamworlds in a Victorian setting either, Backlands opts for the landscape and community of the Northeastern Brazil outback, Internet opts for the internet, Land that Wonders reconfigures its Wonderland as a cold health clinic and Looking throws its student Alice into an alternate satirical London. 

In the question for how to make 2020s audiences connect to Alice, her dreamworlds, and the mysterious characters that populate it, this new film trend opts to go as modern and therefore as understandable to audiences as possible. Gone are the poems, the remarks about bathing machines, mock turtle soup, victorian railway journeys and teatimes. Whilst it is a shame to see some of these elements from Carroll disappear in new adaptations, the non success of the last versions that tried a Victorian setting is an obvious reason as to why this choice is no longer taken. If audiences do not connect with the Victorian setting, filmmakers' revisioning the novels to now remains the only viable option to connect the Alice tales back to cinema audiences and to invite new ones in.

I invite you to watch the trailers of these "new carrollian" films below. Some you can find around online, others are awaiting release. All are worth your time:

(TW: some trailers contain strobe lighting)

Alice 160 events list!

 

(Source: Official Alice160 Japanese logo by MacmillanAliceJP)

Scroll all, all the way down to the very bottom of this blog to find a list of events that will be updated monthly as Alice160 starts to roll out celebrations, performances, TV broadcasts, film screenings and much more. Exclusives, world premieres, and rarities will be highlighted amongst many other things.

The calendar contains contributions by the good people of Lewis Carroll Society Facebook, and is made possible by Elfsight. 

Alice 160: "Viens nous voir Alix!" - Alix and the Wonderfolk (2019 -21) and carrollian language learning.

(All the major characters. Credit: ici.tou.tv) 

7 year old Alix walks through her mirror into a magical land. She befriends the wise walrus, inventive Hatter and Hare, and energetic egg Gros Coco. Their adventures are hindered by the overbearing queen like boss supreme director. (IMDB description) 

Regular viewers of the French conglomerate tv Channel TV5MONDE in Europe may have noticed things have gotten rather Carrollian in the mornings. As part of its Jeunesse (Children's/Youth) programming TV5MONDE Europe have started showing season 2 of the French Canadian series "Alix et les Merveilleux" (Alix and the Wonderfolk) This little half an hour series ran on Canadian TV for 3 years.  This series could well gain a audience of language learners, and Carrollians, beyond the intended child target market. I'll explain in a moment why I think if you're learning French (any variant, but especially French as spoken in Canada) this show will really help. First we'll talk about what this series actually is!

(Alix (Rosalie Daoust) and Rabbit (Inès Talbi) Photo Credit: TV5MONDE)

Although not an adaptation of the famous novels, Alix... has a end credit which translates to "liberally inspired by the work of Lewis Carroll" and certainly it makes good on that promise. The spirit of Carroll's original books is retained here by how bizarre the plotlines per episode get. There will be turns that logically make no sense, or are designed to make the audience laugh. In several episodes Alix breaks from daydreaming to ask her family a question related to her dream, which on answering, she dives back to imagining again. 

In this sense Alix holds on to the intent of Carroll's work the way other children's series using the characters normally don't. It remembers to be as strange as a literal dream, as well as amusing.  Plots generally start with Alix facing a problem in real life, typically with her parents, sister, or brother (all double as roles in Wonderland later) then daydreaming she goes through a mirror under the stairs and encounters friends who are having similar problems in a parallel plot. Yes, it has the same set-up as Adventures in Wonderland (1992) and long term fans of that can consider this series a direct successor. I prefer this series personally just for more how carrollian it feels and how off the rails plots can go.

(The Pause tea party. Photo Credit: TV5MONDE)

Rosalie Daoust's Alix, energetic, helpful, and a daydreamer,  is Alice in modern-day childhood, whilst Grande Patronne (Marilyn Castonguay) with selfish demands, royalty status, and want to send someone to the dungeon, mirrors the Queen of Hearts. Rabbit (played by Inès Talbi) mixes the White Rabbit with White Knight characters, having Rabbit's overall characteristics but knight's inventing flair (like Knight, the inventions always go catastrophically wrong one way or another) Chef (Martin Héroux) is a mix of Caterpillar, King of Hearts and the footmen characters, being a messenger for royalty, and loving rules and order. Morse (as played by Didier Lucien) is a strange mix of the looking glass sheep (he runs a shop with a magical counter) and the Walrus (giving his love of raw fish) Humpty Dumpty (played by Alex Desmarais) re-named Gros Coco, is a young egg, and often overexcited, and perhaps the character here who is the furthest from their original form. Hatter and Hare ( Jean-Philippe Lehoux and Luc Bourgeois) are as usual, but Hare is a musician who has anxiety, and this Hatter actually owns a hat workshop.  The "mad tea party" is a enforced tea break that occurs once per ep where characters are obligated to drop what they are doing in the plot, take tea together, and play a childhood game, or just one that is plain weird. 

Carrollian objects and themes such as: cards, strange versions of croquet, chess, nonsensical trials, weird kitchen running, songs that make no sense, dancing, ridiculous advice, bad advice, logic-less laws, seeing dreams as important, and magical foods all make their due appearances in the series. Not bad at all for something that is nominally an "inspired by" work. There is an unshakable sense that the writing team has read Carroll's novels over several times, and has tried to re-create the same feelings of fun, whimsy, and outright strangeness in their own work. I can't really say this for any other series which also fall into the "character and location using" category.

(Alix (Rosalie Daoust) encounters Chef (Martin Héroux) (Photo credit: TV5MONDE)

So why may Alix as a series help Carrollians who specifically are learning French? First of all, the series is already has characters you'll know, albeit in a different form. Secondly, it has a jaw dropping 195 episodes, making it one of the longest "inspired by" Carroll series to run. Thirdly, the language, being for younger audiences, is somewhat simplified, meaning if you're a beginner/late beginner in French, this is for you. The accents of the actors also have a bonus of being for the most part, VERY clear. You can 100 percent learn from this series also if you aren't learning the French Canadian variation of French (just bear in mind some words are different in standard, as is prononciations). 

Lastly, its just fun. Fun is something that is difficult to replicate in language learning and if this series can be that for you, it will certainly help. 

Alix and the Wonderfolk airs on TV5MONDE Europe on weekdays. It is on demand worldwide at PLUS, and some episodes with French subtitles are on Archive.org.