Authenticity of Simulacra?: The Problematic Process of Creating a Medieval Screenwork.

Yule, Eleanor (2015) Authenticity of Simulacra?: The Problematic Process of Creating a Medieval Screenwork. In: 10th Annual International Screenwriting Research Network Conference, London. (Unpublished)

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Abstract / Summary

Authenticity or simulacra? The problematic process of creating a ‘medieval’, screenwork.

Is it possible, in a post digital age, to re create an ‘authentic’ screen version of the medieval past which has not been distorted by contemporary or historical ideologies, gender bias and the process of adaptation?

Can a conventional narrative structure ever hope to depict an age which was ‘non- chronological’, and where time, ‘was experienced as moving slowly, in a circular rhythm or even not at all’ (Bernau, Bilhauer :2009). Or does the medieval period, described by Umberto Eco as an historical ‘open text’, actually lend itself to a new kind of narrative treatment?

Screenwriter and final year practice based PhD student, Eleanor Yule looks at examples of ‘historical simulacra’, evident in popular medieval screenworks such as Les Visitors du Soir (Carne, 1942), The Lion in Winter (Harvey, 1968) and The Name of the Rose (Annaud, 1986) which, arguably, present a distorted view of the period, particualry in thier depictions of the medieval woman which fail to reflect it as a period, now recognised by second wave feminists, as progressive and during which women’s status and creativity were celebrated (Bogin:1976).

Yule turns to re -enactment, reimagining and sensory auto -ethnography in an attempt to re- stage and re create a more ‘authentic’ experience of the medieval past, in order to produce a written semi- fictional screenwork set amongst the Troubadours of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s courts of love in 12th century Occitania in South West France.

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