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 The Byron Bay Writers Festival in conjunction with Dendy Byron Bay Cinemas presents a premiere film and drinks event to launch into the Byron Bay Writers Festival 2009
Disgrace
Wednesday 5 August, Drinks 6pm, Film 7pm @ the Dendy Byron Bay
In 1999, Disgrace, a novel by South African-born author J.M. Coetzee, won the Booker Prize. The Observer newspaper polled a host of literary luminaries in 2006 and Disgrace was heralded as the greatest British, Irish or Commonwealth novel of the previous twenty-five years. Coetzee himself is now an Australian citizen, resident in Adelaide.
In August, Disgrace comes to you on the big screen. The movie adaptation, starring John Malkovich as Professor David Lurie, had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008, where it won the International Critics’ Award, to tumultuous applause. The Byron Bay Writers Festival in conjunction with Dendy Byron Bay Cinemas invites you to ease your way into the Writers Festival by enjoying this special sneak preview and raising a glass with us in celebration.
David Lurie, twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as an English professor in post-apartheid South Africa, finds his life falling apart. When he seduces one of his students, and does nothing to protect himself from the consequences, he is dismissed from his teaching position, and takes refuge on his daughter's farm in the Eastern Cape. For a time, his daughter's influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the country is changing and unrest increasing. In the aftermath of a vicious attack on the farm, he is forced to come to terms with more than his disgrace alone.
With a stunning, spare screenplay written by Anna Maria Monticelli, Disgrace is a powerful portrait of a man whose career is demolished, sense of self dismantled, reputation shredded and whose power completely vanishes in the wake of the rape of his daughter. The film brilliantly reflects the book’s South African and universal themes, and John Malkovich provides a confronting, disturbing and masterful performance as Professor David Lurie, an individual whose world has splintered and shattered as the balance of power in South Africa uneasily shifts and violence flares. Disgrace is a study of extremes, in which ruin is posited against salvation, chaos against order and savagery against humanity. It is a sobering and intensely felt examination of the abuse of power on an individual, political and societal scale.
Tickets are $18 and bookings essential through Dendy Byron Bay Cinemas, 108 Jonson St Byron Bay or 6680 8555.
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