Cornell Cinema features special screening of new film version of Lolita Sept. 9

Cornell Cinema will host Dmitri Nabokov and screenwriter Stephen Schiff at a special benefit premiere of Lolita on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.

Directed by Adrian Lyne, this latest adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial 1957 novel has made headlines since its completion two years ago. Now, Cornell Cinema, the Samuel Goldwyn Co. and Cornell's Department of Russian Literature are offering Ithaca audiences one of the first American public screenings.

The screening leads into the Nabokov Centenary Festival at Cornell, Sept. 10 to 12, and admission to the film is $12, $8 for students and seniors. No complimentary tickets or discount cards will be accepted. Tickets may be purchased in advance by calling 255-3522. The screening is open to the general public, but the number of tickets is limited, and those that remain will be available starting Aug. 31 at the Willard Straight Hall ticket desk.

The fictional and lyrical memoirs of a middle-aged man's obsessive passion for a young girl, Nabokov's Lolita, recently named one of the top 10 novels of the century by the Modern Library, was turned down by four American publishers before it finally made it to print in the United States in 1958. Adrian Lyne's screen adaptation of the book faced similar rejection after its completion in 1996.

Some critics claimed the film would never be released in this country. Earlier this year, however, the Showtime cable channel picked up the first American rights to the film, and it was broadcast Aug. 2. The Samuel Goldwyn Co. has now made plans to release Lolita in theaters across the country in October. Except for a one-week run in Los Angeles to allow the film to qualify for the Academy Awards, the Cornell Cinema screening Sept. 9 will be one of the first opportunities for a theatrical audience in the United States to judge Lolita on its merits rather than the buzz.

Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son and an internationally known singer, and Stephen Schiff, the film's screenwriter and a staff writer for the New Yorker, will introduce and discuss Lolita at the Cornell Cinema screening.