Media

"The Phantom on Film": A Global Interdisciplinary Research and Engagement Project

23 Mar 2017

 

Dr Giorgio Biancorosso, Associate Professor in the HKU Department of Music, is involved in a global interdisciplinary research project to map the mechanisms and extraordinary extent of cultural transfer represented by the ‘Phantom on Film’ phenomenon. Gaston Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra), first published in 1909-1910, has become the object of constant creative re-interpretation all over the world. Nowhere is this more compellingly illustrated than in the fifty-plus screen adaptations - silent films and talkies, horror films and musicals, cartoons and telenovelas and more - that have been made in places as far apart as Hollywood, Brazil and China between 1916 and today.

The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and also involves researchers from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal Opera House, and the Universities of Edinburgh, Sao Paulo, Tennessee and Udine. Several of the project team members will be joining Dr Biancorosso for a roundtable discussion in the HKU Black Box to discuss film and television adaptations, fan art, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary musical.

Members of the media are cordially invited to the event. Details are as follows:
Date: March 24, 2017 (Friday)
Time: 5:00 pm
Venue: The HKU Black Box, LG54, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Speakers:
Jacqueline Avila (University of Tennessee)
Giorgio Biancorosso (HKU)
Timmy Chen (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh)
Clarice Greco (Universidade de São Paulo)
Cormac Newark (Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London)
John Snelson (Royal Opera House, London)

A significant selection of Phantom films will be screened as part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Cine Fan Programme between March 23 and April 3, 2017. Films include the enormously influential 1925 Hollywood adaptation, Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974), The Phantom Lover (1995), starring Leslie Cheung, and the Chinese-language adaptation: Ma-xu Weibang's Song at Midnight (Yebang gesheng, 1937), arguably the first Chinese horror, and its sequel, Song at Midnight, Part II, (Yebang gesheng xuji), made in 1941 at the height of the Sino-Japanese war.

For media enquiries or individual interview requests, please contact Ms Eva Yung, Events Assistant, Faculty of Arts, Tel: (852) 3917 4633 / email: evaffy@hku.hk.