|
Out
of Africa
|
Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
|
Book: Out of Africa (1937)
Movie: Out of Africa (1985)
Premise
movie:
"A study of the life of Danish noblewoman and storyteller Karen ('Isak') Dinesen Blixen, from her marriage and departure for Kenya in 1913 until her return to Denmark in 1931. As she struggles to maintain a coffee farm through various struggles and disasters, and strives to improve relations with the local natives, her marriage of convenience to a titled aristocrat gradually gives way to an enduring romance with the noted hunter and adventurer Denys Finch Hatton."
from:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089755/plotsummary
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Premise
book:
"In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes--and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/
-/0679600213/qid=1092556367/sr=8-3/ref=pd_ka_3/
103-8808597-9127866?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
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Author:
" Karen Blixen remains a complex figure in the writing and history of colonial Africa. Author, storyteller, and early colonizer, she helped to define Africa and its people for the many Europeans who read her novels, chiefly Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass. Criticism of her work frequently shifts from admiration of her form to outrage at her portrayal of Africans. Karen Blixen's complicated life and work continue to be studied, debated, and questioned in light of both the colonial society she inhabited and the modern reality of a postcolonial world.
Born in 1885 fifteen miles north of Copenhagen in Rungstedlund, Denmark, Karen Dinesen grew up on her family's spacious estate and led a somewhat typical aristocratic life. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen, fought in the Prusso-Danish war in 1864, and later lived in the United States for two years amongst Native American tribes. In 1895 when Karen was ten years old, Wilhelm hung himself; he left his wife to raise five children alone. Although Karen knew little of her father, she often claimed to identify most with his family and his sense of exploration. In comparing her life in Africa with her father's time in America, Blixen comments, "he turned away from Europe and its civilization and lived for three years among Indians in North America without seeing another white man" (Hannah 13). Much of Blixen's early life consisted of what she describes as an unhappy childhood amidst strict Victorian sensibilities. Schooled at home with a private tutor, Blixen did not fit well with her family's expectations. Blixen even contends that differences with her aunt became "one of my main reasons for going to Africa" (15).
Because of this unfulfilled childhood, Blixen quickly turned to storytelling as a source of comfort--a practice she repeated later in life (Hannah 17). She began writing at the age of eight with the frequent stories she told to her sisters. Blixen published two stories in 1907 and another in 1909 in Denmark; all three concerned ghost stories with women as their protagonists. Writing, however, did not become her primary means of _expression until after she returned from Africa. As a young woman, she attended a school of design in Copenhagen, and later the Danish Royal Academy of Art. Years later, Blixen cited her training as a painter as a major influence in her work. Commenting upon her work, she says, "painting has constantly revealed the true nature of the world to me. I have always had difficulty in seeing what a landscape really looks like unless I have been given the key to it by a great painter" (21). This affinity for rich description became a frequent thread in her writing. In 1914, Karen Dinesen married her Swedish cousin Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke and moved to Kenya with him to start a coffee farm in the Ngong Hills."
from:
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Blixen.html
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Director:
Sydney Pollack
Cast:
Meryl Streep (Karen Blixen), Robert Redford (Denys Finch-Hatton), Klaus-Maria Brandauer (Baron Bror van Blixen), Michael Kitchen (Berkely-Cole), Malik Bowens (Farah), Joseph Thiaka (Kimante), Stephen Kinyanjui (Kinyanjui), Michael Gough (Lord Delamere) and others.
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