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Film by Harry Vandervlist Screenwriters Gary Burns, Deepa Mehta, Paul Quarrington and Anne Wheeler will discuss and present their work during a four-day screenwriting symposium starting September 26. The University of Calgary's Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Programme will present "From Text to Screen: Screenwriting in the New Millenium" alongside the first Calgary International Film Festival. According to local playwright Clem Martini, a member of the programme committee, the symposium "offers a rich immersion experience" for those interested in Canadian film. Taken together, he says the four writers offer a pretty good group for exploring screenwriting in Canada. "We've got people born and raised here, people who are creating film in Calgary, people who just do theatrical releases, and people doing television. It's a real cross-section." Only those sequestered from film festival coverage for the past month could have missed the attention garnered by Gary Burns's film waydowntown (co-written, never forget, by this publication's own contributor, James Martin). Burns' previous films are The Suburbanators and Kitchen Party. Anne Wheeler, writer for Bye Bye Blues, Cowboys Don't Cry, Loyalties, and Marine Life, began her career in the documentary section of the National Film Board before moving on to drama. Martini says she will present a war story. Paul Quarrington, well-known as a novelist, essayist and screenwriter for films like Perfectly Normal and Whale Music, will also present new work. Martini could only confirm that the film is a 30-minute short – beyond that, he says, "it's a secret." Deepa Mehta's acclaimed film trilogy, which began with Fire in 1996 and continued with Earth in 1998, should conclude this year with the release of Water. Martini says Mehta will discuss the process of creating a trilogy and the difficulty of exploring a theme on that scale. Her appearance at the symposium offers a chance to hear about the particular challeges she's faced, not just because the scale of her project, but also as a result of objections to her work on grounds of religious dogma –"sometimes from those who haven't seen the films," according to Martini. The screenwriting symposium extends the Markin-Flanagan Programme's range, in keeping with the focus on drama adopted for the year 2000 (and inaugurated with the appearance of Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner). "When one thinks `writer,' one generally thinks `novelist,'" comments Martini. "Screenwriters aren't necessarily associated with their work in the same way a novelist is. If you see a film, you often have to search to find out who wrote it. And then in Canada it's difficult for screenwriters to get their work to the market, which is small or controlled by others." The symposium's daily discussions with screenwriters, and evening presentations and screenings, should help generate a better understanding and appreciation of the art as practiced in Canada. ("From Text to Screen" runs from September 26 to October 1 at The Uptown, 612 - 8 Ave. S.W. Daily discussions are held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and screenings are at 7:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. Call Sandra Vida at 220-8177 for further details).

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