Join us virtually for a discussion of DANCING ISLAND based on Gifts of Unknown Things, a novel by Lyall Watson. We hope you can make it on Monday, March 27th!

Genre: Feature

Logline: Shipwrecked on a remote Indonesian island in the mid-1970s, a marine biologist champions a 13-year-old dancer in her power struggle with the leader of the local mosque who’s threatened by her steadily increasing paranormal abilities.

Statement from the Author: Ever since falling in love with Lyall Watson’s Gifts of Unknown Things back in 1978, I’ve wanted to adapt it for the screen. But I felt stymied by lack of firsthand knowledge about Indonesia’s basic landscape and culture. Then in 2013, when our daughters were 13 and 10, we sold our house in Vermont, pulled them out of school, and decided it was time for a family adventure.

Asked to name their ideal destination, both girls voted for Bali. Why? Because for years when they were sick and needed to sit still, we let them watch Ring of Fire, a PBS documentary by a pair of English brothers who spent ten years exploring the most out-of-the-way islands of Indonesia from their base of operations on Bali. (Both came to know Watson personally.)

We wound up staying either there or on the neighboring island of Lombok for seven weeks–enough time to soak up the religion (Hindu on Bali, Islam on Lombok) and culture, especially the Balinese form of dance, which features the mesmeric percussiveness of gamelan that accompanies mythical storytelling through the highly stylized movements of the young teenage dancers.

Under the advice of a seasoned professional in the film business that “no studio exec would dare touch this story with a ten-foot pole,” I’ve kept this script on the shelf despite having revised it multiple times. But the recent violent suppression of women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan coupled with the religiously inspired curtailment of women’s reproductive choices in this country have changed my attitude. I now feel that it’s time to confront head-on through the medium of film the male-dominated power structures that fear and attack the power of what I term the feminine principle. I can only hope that some producer out there feels the same.

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Hope to see you then!