From colonial shadows to the story of love in Out of Africa

Abstract

Out of Africa (1985) is a cinematic masterpiece adapted by Sydney Pollack from the eponymous literary work and portions of other books by the Danish author Isak Dinesen, whose real name was Karen Christenze Blixen (1885 - 1962). The film does not focus on the familiar colonial aspect, but rather shifts its focus to a deeply romantic love story against the African landscape. Drawing upon Linda Hutcheon's framework of adaptation theory (2006) and Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial theory (1994), combined with a comparative-contrastive research method between the memoir and the film, the paper focuses on analyzing the shift from the colonial imprint to the love story in Out of Africa. The study demonstrates that the adaptation process from the novel to the screen is not merely a change in narrative medium, but also a reconstruction of discourse about Africa.