Dickens and Crime: Fiction and Film

The Wheeler Centre and Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) are proud to present the Adrian Wootton Illustrated Film Talks, supported by MIFF 37 South Market & Accelerator. Adrian Wootton is co-director of Dickens 2012, the worldwide project to celebrate the life, work and enduring legacy of Dickens. A former director of the London Film Festival, British Film Institute and the UK’s national Film Theatre, Wootton, presently Film London’s chief executive, will present a series of fascinating talks exploring how Dickens’ work has been imagined for the screen.

With a plethora of photo slides and multiple film clips, draws on Wootton’s research into Dickens’s fascination with, and writing about, true crime, social injustice and penal reform, his fictional work in and influence on the crime fiction and detective genre in literature (including his collaboration with other authors, such as Wilkie Collins).

This session includes (at the end of the talk at 6pm) a special screening of the 63-minute documentary Dickens in London (UK - 2012; Director Chris Newby; Writer Michael Eaton).

Five of Dickens’ journalistic essays were adapted by Michael Eaton to form five radio plays depicting Dickens’ impressions of London and forming a biographical portrait. Film artist Chris Newby responded to the plays and, working in counter point to the audio, created this arresting, powerful and highly distinctive work that incorporates animation, puppetry and contemporary footage.