New York’s Quad Cinema is encouraging audiences to revisit — or discover — the works of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala by hosting a retrospective celebrating the two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter. Titled “In Her Words: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Woman Behind Merchant Ivory,” the event will take place June 8-14.
“The creative sobriquet of Merchant Ivory was coined, at the outset of what became nearly 50 years of storied moviemaking, from the surnames of director/screenwriter James Ivory and his partner and producer Ismail Merchant. Yet there would not have been Merchant Ivory as we came to know it without a third core collaborator, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who became far and away the team’s favored screenwriter,” a press release details. A former author of novels and short stories, Prawer Jhabvala was asked to write the film company’s first feature, 1963’s “The Householder.”
Prawer Jhabvala won Oscars for adapting “A Room with a View” and “Howards End,” both of which are based on E.M. Forster novels. She also earned a nod for her adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” All three features will screen at the retrospective, as well as other titles such as “Autobiography of a Princess,” a portrait of a divorced Indian princess living in London, and “Shakespeare Wallah,” a drama about an English theater troupe performing Shakespeare’s plays in India.
For more information about “In Her Words: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Woman Behind Merchant Ivory,” head over to The Quad’s website.
Prawer Jhabvala died in 2013.