From Carver’s Words to Iñárritu’s Screen : Birdman

A life of brilliant dejection and drunkard waywardness paved the way for Raymond Carver to carve out the short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A life of brilliant technical inspiration etched Alejandro Gonnarez Iñárritu’s cinematic masterpiece, Birdman.

And in the heart of it all lays the art of adapting fiction to screen with originality. Carver’s story forms the basis and crux of the theatrical reawakening of ex-Birdman’s, the character played by Michael Keaton.

Sparse dialogues and emotional words left unspoken make Carver’s story. Birdman does justice and follows suit. Both expressions of Art form unnerving case studies.

This Crash Course pitches light to the Art of adaptation and reinvention and originality and inspirations, ranging from Carver’s story, the dynamics of American Theatre, Iñárritu’s original voice, and Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema. Here, we understand the function of ignorance for an Artist’s redemption through his Art.

How this course works

The participants can initiate their entry into the text and the film on their own, prior to the Crash Course, but the programme will start with the basics, with a presentation of the historical, artistic and aesthetic background of Carver and Iñárritu, before undertaking a close reading of the text and the film in the sessions.

This course, like all programmes at IST, is designed in view of dynamic exchanges between the instructor and the participants ; therefore interjections, questions, comments and alternative interpretations are invited and encouraged throughout the session, while an interactive time is kept specifically at the end of each study session.