After sold out screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, Bright Star screened at The Florida State University just before opening in theaters around the country. The free sneak preview came courtesy of the Film School’s Torchlight Program and its director, Paul Cohen.
Cohen, who attended the Toronto festival with three Florida State students, worked with Apparition, the film’s distribution company, to arrange the special screening. “I’m thrilled to bring Jane Campion’s film and the rare quality of her filmmaking to the university for students, colleagues and community members to see and discuss,” Cohen remarked.
Campion, whose screenwriting work on The Piano earned her an Oscar for Best Writing, penned the screenplay for Bright Star and directed the film. The story is about two young lovers, 24-year-old poet John Keats and his 18-year-old enchanting muse, Fanny Brawne, and what Campion describes as the “unstoppable momentum” of their intense love affair. Campion writes in letters posted on her website that their relationship is “a wave of romantic obsession that only deepens as their troubles mount.”
After the screening, Cohen hosted a discussion and Q&A session with American poet Barbara Hamby and scholar James O’Rourke, both from Florida State University’s English Department.