A special event:
On Sunday, November 16th at 2.p.m. at the Renoir Cinema, in London, Raul Ruiz will present In Pursuit of Treasure Island and talk about his ideas on narration as expressed in his writings and films. The talk will follow a rare screening of Treasure Island (1985).
All four of Raul’s books published by Dis Voir in English will be available.
In Pursuit of Treasure Island (2008) £16
Poetics in Cinema Vol 1 (2nd ed) (2005) £14
Poetics in Cinema Vol 2 (2007) £14.95
The Book of Disappearances (2005) £17.50
See Renoir Cinema
‘Ruiz’s approach to the adaptation of Stevenson’s classic novel is far from conventional. “The way Stevenson tells the story is so remarkable that it could be about anything – pirates, kidnappers, whatever. We are surrounded by stories that are like houses that we can enter. We play amidst these stories, sometimes being involved in two or three of them at once.” The film thus transforms Stevenson’s novel into a gigantic conspiracy, a “house of fiction” that pre-exists those who enter into it. Ruiz describes the film as being about the games of “simulacra” and the “playing of roles”, remarking “Treasure Island is something of a synopsis, a trailer, or a ‘user’s manual’ for my entire cinema.” (Adrian Martin)’
See also: In Pursuit of Treasure Island by Raul Ruiz (Dis Voir, 2008) (translated by Paul Buck & Catherine Petit). Written in French and initially published in 1989, this first edition in English coincides with its French reissue.
“Behind each children’s book, behind each bestseller, a sacred text is hidden. Stevenson’s novel has been scrutinized, read and re-read a thousand times. It has been used as a model for a map that led us in search of an island where a cave that represented the sky was located. And in that sky, the stars and planets were represented by diamonds, real diamonds…”
Both a prelude and a continuation to Raul Ruiz’s film, Treasure Island, this text presents itself as the follow up, or rather, a pursuit of Stevenson’s novel. An example of the way Ruiz parodies the text and plunges the story inside the story, before losing the reader in a labyrinth of strange images.
First posted: Monday, November 3rd, 2008.
