From multi Oscar®-winning Oliver! to BBC’s hit series Bleak House, the world of film and TV have endeavoured to translate Dickens’s immortal stories to the screen. Dickens’s highly visual narrative style inspired early film-makers and many have credited the author with providing the very DNA that cinematic language is based upon. The oldest surviving film version of a work by Dickens – an adaptation of A Christmas Carol – is from 1901 and over a hundred years later Dickens’s works are still being filmed for cinema and TV and every one of his 15 novels has been filmed at least twice.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
Injustice breeds injustice
Accidents will occur in the best regulated families
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some
The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.
Treachery don't come natural to beaming youth; but trust and pity, love and constancy,--they do, thank God!
Film, TV & Radio
Dickens on Screen
Dickens on Screen will be the largest retrospective ever staged of film & TV works based on or inspired by Charles Dickens.
Dickens on the BBC
The BBC is behind new Dickens-inspired TV and radio dramas, documentaries plus an innovative visual arts project in partnership with Film London.
Claire Tomalin, author of the latest biography of 'Charles Dickens: A Life', will be taking part in the Sky Arts Book Show Dickens Special.
aBOut Dickens - Events in Bologna for Dickens' Bicentenary
24 Feb 2012
Quartiere S. Stefano, Sala Conferenze del Baraccano, Bologna, Italy
Beatrice Balsano, psychoanalist and president of A.P.U.N. (“Psicologia Umanistica e delle Narrazioni. Psicoanalisi. Arte. Scienze Umane”) discusses with author Valerio Varesi of “Dark and Filthy. The dark side of Dickens’ narrative”. From 6pm.
In 2012, Barbican will host a retrospective on silent film (pre-1930) adaptations of Dickens's novels as part of the centre’s regular Silent Film and Live Music series.
The film and TV retrospective ‘Dickens on Film’ will make a stop in New York and will be hosted at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2012.
To mark the bicentenary of Dickens's birth, the Rutland County Museum will host a special screening of Carol Reed's Oliver!, preceded by readings by members of the local Dickens Fellowship from 7pm. Tickets £3 from Oakham Library.
British Council 'Dickens 2012' festival in Phillipines
December 2011
Rizal Park, Manila (Phillipines)
The Philippines are hosting a very special Dickensian Christmas event with film screenings of Nicholas Nickleby (2003), A Tale of Two Cities (1958), Great Expectations (1946) and of course A Christmas Carol (1951). The films will be screened to a large open-air audience at Rizal Park in Manila, the largest urban park in Asia. This will celebrate two great birthdays in 2011 and 2012: Charles Dickens and Philippine national hero Jose Rizal.
Dickens on Screen will be the largest retrospective ever staged of film & TV works based on or inspired by Charles Dickens. The three-month season will premiere at the BFI Southbank in London in January 2012 and will embark on a national and international tour thereafter.
From 28 November to February 2012, the BBC will celebrate the work of one of Britain’s greatest writers with Dickens on the BBC, a season of documentary, drama and discussion programmes across television and radio. From a bold new three-part adaptation of Great Expectations for BBC One to the completion of Dickens’ unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by writer Gwyneth Hughes on BBC Two and Life-long Dickens fan Armando Iannucci reviewing the development of a revolutionary master story-teller.
Films such as David Lean’s Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and Nicholas Nickleby (2003) will be shown across cities in China alongside literary salons with Chinese writers such as Mo Yan who will discuss the relevance of Dickens in contemporary literature today.
