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 (right) and Edith (left) 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.