Want to watch Olivia Colman perform a brand new lecture by Elena Ferrante?
Yes! I do. You probably do, too. Well, starting today, as part of the International Literature Festival Utrecht, you can indeed stream video of the utterly delightful Olivia Colman reading a brand new lecture by Elena Ferrante (as translated by Ann Goldstein; the lecture will also be available in Dutch and the original Italian). All for the low, low price of five pounds British sterling!
Ferrante is the winner of this year’s Belle van Zuylen Ring, an award given by the ILFU that recognizes a work’s explicit social engagement. The lecture, called “A Skein of Written Words,” is being billed as a “blazing plea for women’s freedom.” As Ferrante writes: “Since Belle’s time, we have modified every scenario, and yet we’ve remained bound and constricted within a language that expresses us only in part, we’ve remained bound and constricted within men’s rules, within their daily abuses of power.”
And if you didn’t know it already, Colman is set to star in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter.
