Definition
Director Claire McCarthy’s 2018 film Ophelia is covered in this entry, which looks at the film’s attempt to tell the familiar Hamlet story from the perspective of Ophelia. Ophelia evokes Ophelian and feminist iconography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to interrogate patriarchal narratives and imagery.
Ophelia’s Key Contexts and Journey to the Screen
The 2018 film Ophelia 2018, directed by Australian filmmaker Claire McCarthy, had a glamorous Sundance Film Festival premiere that year. Despite this rare honor, the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective faced many obstacles delaying the film’s release to audiences worldwide, highlighting the current barriers facing cinematic adaptions of Shakespeare in the marketplace. Those who made and were passionate about the film – the production company, Covert Media, along with the director, producers, and actors – had to work for well over a year after Ophelia’sSundance premiere to secure a...
References
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Croteau, M. (2022). Ophelia, dir. Claire McCarthy, 2018. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_221-1
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