In the weeks and months following the inaugural County Adaptation Film Festival (CAFF) Sep 27-29, I lost count of the number of people who stopped me in the street to congratulate me on the success the Festival and share their experiences.

On on occasion a man recognized me and left his group to come say what an incredible time he had had at the Festival – ‘I really wasn’t sure what an adaptation was or why you wanted to make a whole festival about it – but after that opening night, I get it! Wow. What a conversation. Eleanor Wachtel and the two writers were amazing. I can't wait to see what happens next year!’

This kind of response is both the best possible reward and a true indicator of the impact the Festival had under my leadership.  

In creating a festival that put screenwriters in the spotlight and in peer-to-peer conversation what I wanted most was for the screenwriters – so often overlooked at film festivals in favour of actors and directors – to be the stars and to have a meaningful conversation with peer artists.  If I could achieve that, then the stage would be set for magic.

On opening night, Eleanor Wachtel stopped the post-show discussion which she was moderating, between New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo and award-winning screenwriter Erin Dignam, to say that in her 30+ year career she had never experienced a conversation like it.  

I couldn’t have scripted it better.  

“ I first met Alexandra Seay when she invited me to show “The Colour of Ink” as manager of Picton’s magnificent Regent Theatre. She also invited an accomplished local filmmaker, Tess Girard, to moderate a post-screening discussion onstage — which led to a deep-dive dialogue into the documentary process that went far beyond the usual parameters of a Q&A. It was the kind experience I might hope for at a serious film festival, not a one-off screening in a small town.

As it turned out,  Alexandra was already thinking like a festival director, and dreaming up an ambitious film event for Picton and Prince Edward County: the County Adaptation Film Festival. It was a revelation. There’s been a proliferation of regional film festivals, and I thought the last thing we need is another one. They virtually all follow the same template,  branding themselves “international”  while ordering off the same programming menu as the rest. But creating CAFF, and staging its inaugural edition in 2024, Alexandra has given movie lovers something original and exciting. By putting the spotlight on writers — the unsung, un-empowered and underpaid artists who draft the blueprints of cinema — she’s invented a festival that upends the way we look at films and filmmaking.

After a screening of CAFF’s opening night movie, Widow Clicquot, we saw ace CBC literary interviewer Eleanor Wachtel moderate a conversation between two women, the film’s screenwriter and the author of the book that she adapted. This was the first time they had ever met, or even communicated. It became clear that both felt their respective visions, the book and the script, had been lost in translation during production. What emerged was a fascinating x-ray of the film we’d just seen from the bottom-up. Normally at Q&As we see actors and directors talk about the finished product as part of the promotion ritual.  This discussion untangled the roots what happens to a film between inception and final cut, with insights about the creative process that went far beyond the film itself.

By drawing on the resources of Prince Edward Country — the cuisine, the vineyards, the luxurious Royal Hotel, along with a thriving community of local writers, artists and film industry veterans — Alexandra has create a destination festival that can offer a singular kind of hospitality to both the industry and the audience. Even without the “international” honorific, given the right kind of support, CAFF’s specialized focus could make it a world-cinema magnet for creators devoted to adapting work, or having their work adapted, for the screen.

- Brian D. Johnson, film journalist (Zoomer, Maclean’s) and filmmaker (The Colour of Ink, Al Purdy Was Here)

‘A day in the life of an Executive Director ‘

Coming soon…