Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘films’ Category

Thank you to everyone who entered the Blogging Woolf Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day Ticket Giveaway, in collaboration with @woolfsnightandday and @quiverdistribution. We now have three winners, each of whom will get a pair of tickets to a U.S. screening of the film.

And each shared their answer to the optional question, “How did you meet Virginia Woolf?

Tickets for the “unromantic comedy” based on Virginia Woolf’s 1919 novel are available for purchase at this link.

Winners in the Blogging Woolf Night & Day Ticket Giveaway

  1. Sherry A.
  2. Kathleen Dixon Donnelly
  3. Diane Gillespie

Here’s how our winners first met Virginia

Sherry A’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

I became aware of Virginia Woolf in the 1970s. She sounded fascinating, and over the years I bought many of her books. However, I didn’t read them; my high school teachers had convinced me I wasn’t smart enough. So, instead, I went out into the world, earned a living, and took care of animals and people.

Then lockdown. My life moved online. Having realized there are worse things than somebody’s unimaginative assessment of one’s intelligence, I took on a zoom book club that had lost its organizer. We started with Mrs. Dalloway. Being retired, and having the books, I managed. We do Woolf: novels, letters, essays, diaries, short stories; and the Woolf-adjacent: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Vanessa Bell, the trench poets, Sappho, Shakespeare. Wherever my members want to go. The wonderful people who come every week have made me the most fortunate woman in the world. Every week, five years, and counting. Common readers all.

Diane Gillespie’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

We met in Mrs. Dalloway’s London, introduced in the 1960s by Professor Sarah Youngblood, one of the few women English Department faculty members at the University of Minnesota. I’ve kept in touch with Virginia Woolf through her writing ever since. Accompanied by Professor Shirley Rose, we conversed through my dissertation years at the University of Alberta. We collaborated on seminars I taught at Washington State University where the Leonard and Virginia Woolf Library resides in Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections. Virginia Woolf continues to inspire much of what I write and publish in my retirement years.

Kathleen Dixon Donnelly’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

When I’d heard of something called the “Bloomsbury Group,” and started my research into writers who hung out together…

Share yours

Please share your reminiscences of how you first met Virginia Woolf in the comments section below.

Katharine Hilbery

A champagne toast for Katharine and William’s short-lived engagement

Mary Datchett and Katharine

A Hilbery family portrait

Katharine Hilbery in her lab

Read Full Post »

The film Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, a playful, visually stunning adaptation of Woolf’s second novel, is now out in the U.S. for a limited run. You can enter a drawing to win a pair of tickets for this fun film with a feminist message.

Why the giveaway?

Justine Waddell, screenwriter and producer, reached out to Blogging Woolf and put us in touch with @woolfsnightandday and @quiverdistribution, who provided six free tickets for our readers, and Blogging Woolf will give them away in pairs.

How to enter the ticket giveaway

Complete the steps below and you will be entered in a drawing for two free tickets to a U.S. showing of Night and Day, which is billed as “an unromantic comedy.”

One entry per person. Submission deadline: Sept. 8, 2026.

  1. Fill out the form below.
  2. Click submit.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

The drawing will be held and winners will be notified on Sept. 8, 2026.

Screenings and tickets

Night and Day will be shown in more than 100 U.S. cinemas around the country. In Ohio, where I live, it will be screened at the following theaters, beginning on the dates noted:

Cleveland/Akron
9/4 – Regal Cobblestone Square 20
9/4 Regal Medina 16
9/25 -Nightlight Cinema in Akron

Columbus
9/4 – AMC Easton Town Center 28

Dayton
9/4 – Regal Fairfield Commons 20

Cincinnati
9/4 AMC West Chester 18

Screenings will also take place in these cities:

New York Metro area, Buffalo, Hartford/New Haven, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, D.C., Norfolk, Atlanta, Augusta, Jacksonville, Orlando/Daytona Beach, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers/Naples, Tampa/St. Pete, Huntsville/Decatur, Nashville, Memphis, Louisville, Detroit, Lansing, Indianapolis, Chicago Peoria/Bloomington, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kansas City, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Wichita/Hutchinson, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Phoenix/Sedona, Tucson, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Portland, Seattle, and Spokane.

To find a theatre near you, check Fandango.

Watch the trailer below for more.

Terms and conditions of the ticket giveaway, via Fandango

Terms and Conditions: Limited time offer. Fandango Promotional Code (“Code”) is good for up to $15 off (total ticket price and associated fees and charges) the purchase of one movie ticket to see Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day at participating Fandango theaters in the US. Code must be entered at checkout. Code is void, and can no longer be used, if not redeemed by 11/30/26 or when Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day is no longer in theaters, whichever comes first. Only valid for purchase of movie tickets made at Fandango.com or via the Fandango app and cannot be redeemed directly at any theater box office. If lost or stolen, cannot be replaced. No cash value, except as required by law. Void where prohibited. Not valid with any other offer. Offer valid in U.S. and D.C., excluding U.S. territories and where prohibited by law. One-time use only. Non-transferable. Not for resale; void if sold or exchanged. If cost of movie ticket with Fandango’s associated fees and charges included is more than Code’s maximum discount, then user must pay the difference. Any price difference between movie ticket purchased and Code’s maximum discount will not be refunded. Excludes multiple admission tickets. Fandango Loyalty Solutions, LLC is not a sponsor or co-sponsor of this offer. The redemption of the Code is subject to Fandango’s Terms and Policies at www.fandango.com/terms-and-policies. FANDANGO is a registered trademark of Fandango Media, LLC.

Read Full Post »

It’s Sept. 1, which means we have only three days to wait until the U.S. Sept. 4 release of the film Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, a playful and visually stunning adaptation of  Woolf’s second and longest novel that emphasizes her feminist theme.

Night & Day is an unromantic comedy about a passionate astronomer Katharine Hilbery who does everything she can to avoid romantic love and marriage. – official synopsis

Screenings and tickets

A Hilbery family portrait

The film will be shown in more than 100 U.S. cinemas in these cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, Phoenix, Austin, San Diego, Miami, Detroit, Cleveland and Nashville.

You can purchase tickets at this link.

Released in the UK on June 19, after premiering in the European market early this year, Digital Spy called it a “refreshing” period drama.

The cast and the changes

Katharine Hilbery in her lab

Set in 1910, Night and Day stars Haley Bennett playing Katharine Hilbery as a would-be astronomer who wants to study at Cambridge.

Coincidentally, Haley spent her early years split between Ohio and Florida, which included attending high school in Stow, an Ohio city adjacent to mine.

Justine Waddel wrote the screenplay and produced the film. Simon Goff wrote the energetic score. Both were part of an interesting post-screening discussion at the 35th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Sound in Istanbul in June, which was moderated by Woolf scholar Anne Fernald.

Here are some of the changes to Woolf’s novel that the film includes:

  • Jennifer Saunders and Timothy Spall play Mrs. and Mr. Hilbery, who are rather different from their novelistic originals,

    Katharine

  • Elyas M’Barek is “working-class editor” Ralph Denham,
  • Jack Whitehall is an effectual William Rodney, who confuses ‘astrologer’ with ‘astronomer’; and
  • singer Lily Allen is forthright suffragette Mary Datchet.

Filming locations

Filming took place last year at sites in in the north-east of England:

  • Literary and Philosophical Society (Newcastle upon Tyne)
  • Common Room of the Great North (The Mining Institute, also in Newcastle)
  • Ryhope Engines Museum (Sunderland)
  • Tanfield Railway (Gateshead/Durham) and
  • Beamish Museum (County Durham); as well as in Cologne.

Woolf’s novel and the film

Mary Datchet and Katharine

Woolf published Night and Day in 1919 and dedicated it to her artist sister Vanessa Bell, who readers — and Woolf herself — identify as Katharine Hilbery.

In writing the novel, Woolf noted in one of her letters that she was concerned with “the whole question . . . of the things one doesn’t say; what effect does that have?” (L2 400).

So does the film.

Mark Hussey, author of Virginia Woolf A To Z (1995), describes the novel as

“a comic novel of manners concerning five young people struggling with issue of love and work, engagement and marriage, in London in the early years of the twentieth century as the Edwardian generation Woolf herself belonged to sought to escape the social and moral strictures of their parents’ Victorian world. (183).

So does the film.

Fun and contemporary in tone, this refreshing film showcases an ensemble of humourous performances against the ravishing backdrop of London in 1910, advances in science and technology and crumbling Edwardian patriarchy. – official synopsis

Watch the trailer below for more.

Read Full Post »

Clarissa, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, was featured at the Cannes film festival and is expected to be released in the U.S. later this year.

The film transposes the story from London to a modern Nigeria. The Guardian’s film reviewer gives it four stars and describes it as:

a seductively mysterious, languorous, melancholy drama with commanding performances and a great musical score […] set partly in modern-day Lagos, whose ambient streetscapes are conjured up with style, and partly in the more bucolic Abraka in southern Nigeria, 30 years in the past.

Starring Sophie Okonedo as an older Clarissa and David Oyelowo as an older Peter, the film premiered in Cannes earlier this month. Nigerian film-making brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri directed the film.

 

Read Full Post »

Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Mark on the Wall,” published in 1917, was one of the first two stories printed and published by Virginia and her husband Leonard when they started the Hogarth Press. A new experimental short film, now available online, brings her first published story to life.

Anderson Wright’s evocative and experimental short film is described as capturing the essence of Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative, in which a seemingly insignificant mark on the wall triggers the exploration of memory, identity, and the passage of time.

I watched it and found it hauntingly beautiful, with the final words of the film echoing Woolf’s own, minus her words about war.

If you have three minutes and forty-four seconds at your disposal, you can watch it, too.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »