JCU Hosts Screening of "Verano"

Professor Dews and Alessandro Ceschi

On January 25, 2017 the Department of Communications and the Institute for Creative Writing and Literary Translation hosted a screening of “Verano”, a short movie directed by JCU alumnus Alessandro Ceschi and based on Professor Carlos Dews’ short story “Recoleta”.

“Recoleta” is part of a collection of short stories written by Professor Dews while he spent 2 years in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dews drew inspiration for the story from seeing a cleaning lady cry in Recoleta. He tried to imagine a story that would explain what he saw.

A couple of years ago, upon seeing  Ceschi’s short film “Sally Abroad”, Dews immediately chose him to direct the movie adaptation of “Recoleta”. According to Dews, “the biggest challenge in adapting the story for the screen was capturing the non-visual aspects of the original in the purely visual medium of film. In condensing a much longer short story into a very short film, without any dialogue, much of the detail of the story had to be sacrificed.” One of the necessary changes was to set the film in the Verano cemetery in Rome, which according to Dews has the same feel as the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Read more in the interview with Professor Dews.