The Wessex Dramas Project is Awarded "Official Selection" at the Bournemouth International Film Festival .

This Friday, 3rd Oct., the Wessex Dramas Project exhibits its third feature film, The Well Beloved, in a double bill, along with a documentary that was kindly made about the Project, by Dr James Fair, ex of Bournemouth University. The exhibition occurs at 3:15 pm., at the Hilton Hotel in Bournemouth.

The Well Beloved was one of Hardy's novels which he described as "a fantasy", peopling it, along with the quarriers and fisher folk of Portland ("the Isle of Slingers") with mermaids and dryads. This novel/film is a delightful little tale of a sculptor from the island falling in love with three generations of young women from the same fishing family, and all called Avice!

The Wessex Dramas Project, with its young filmmaker-in-residence, Rose, shot this film, Hardy's "The Well Beloved", in and around Portland. The film even includes a mermaids' club from the island, and a specialist underwater cameraman, to capture them. The Project is open to anyone in the Dorset area and its immediate environs. It shoots its scenes for its chosen Hardy novel, at weekends in spring and summer. The project website is wessexdramas.org The project has been established to adapt and produce Thomas Hardy stories for film. It is particularly, at this time, concentrating on Thomas Hardy novels that have never been adapted for film before.

The Wessex Dramas Project welcomes anyone who would like to join. Membership is free and you can audition for Leads, or Supporting roles, or you can just turn up and play an extra, or even help with crewing, and/or production work.

For enquiries, please contact Ann-Marie Goldthorp at info@wessexdramas.org or come along to BIFF at the Hilton Hotel, this Friday, October 3rd.