ABSTRACT
Doris Lessing’s fantasy, The Memoirs of a Survivor, has recently been made into a film, directed by David Gladwell and partly sponsored by the National Film Finance Corporation. Described by Doris Lessing as ‘an attempt at an autobiography’, the novel combines different forms of fantasy or fabulation. The central figure, the unnamed narrator, acts as a link with the reader, describing the attempts of the young gang leader, Gerald, and Emily, the abandoned child consigned to her care, to rebuild functioning social relationships in the face of the collapse of social rules, communication systems and the breakdown of language. One of the sponsors of the film is the National Film Finance Corporation which has a very lively and involved chairperson, who is a film-maker. He was very strongly against the voice-over technique and he holds the view that direct narration is not suitable for film, that it’s using a different sort of language that is not suitable for film language.
