Multiple adaptation processes: The case of Alexander Ahndoril’s The Director and its predecessors in feature film, television documentary and popular print media

It is well known that the novel by Alexander Ahndoril, Regissören/The Director (2006/2008), partially adapts Ingmar Bergman’s film Nattvardsgästerna/The Communicants (1963). It is less well known that the novel also adapts a television documentary about the shoot of The Communicants made in 1962 for Swedish public television by Vilgot Sjöman. In Ahndoril’s novel, then, the transfer moves from Bergman’s film and Sjöman’s documentary to the novel, in contrast to conventional adaptation practice, which moves in the opposite direction. Furthermore, besides moving images, other media have been adapted in Ahndoril’s novel, for example, feature stories in Swedish women’s magazines on Bergman and then-wife Käbi Laretei’s domestic life. Finally, Bergman’s journals have also been adapted, not from the original source text, however, but as represented in academic publications. In sum, Ahndoril’s novel is the result of a multiple adaptation process, involving not only moving images in the form of an art-film feature and a television documentary, but also still photography, popular print media and an academic publication. As such the novel also points towards a broader cultural adaptation process.