To finance a labyrinth this is some bird drama about fascism betrayal and magic by the mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro and its clearly a focus favorite film. For the author it has all the ingredients of good fantasy magic depth as well as a clear underlying stance. When Guillermo Del Toro asked her whether she would turn his film into a book she hesitated at for. 1st but then she accepted the offer and that turned into pans labyrinth the labyrinth of the fun. Stuff. That was such a delightful experience and of course it was a crazy project yakked huge as i didnt think it could be done who would read a book based on a film theyre always bad and the film is so amazing that i can imagine transforming it into words. Alba bass when someone gives you an Impossible Task you have no choice right. Its wonderful to hear that things that look has expanded a universe of his film and i had to invent short stories to flesh out the plot and back stories for the characters and thats what he wanted and he didnt give me any instructions he didnt interfere with my writing at all thats highest. I missed and thats what. We met Cornelia Funke in hamburg the last stop on her tour of germany to promote the book she lived here with her family for a long time before moving to los angeles in 2005 hamburg is also where her career as a writer began. When we 1st met for nearly a phone call in hamburg 12 years ago just after the publication of the 3rd volume of her in car trilogy that was the series that launched her International Career shes meanwhile written more than 70 books theyve been translated into 50 languages and have sold more than 26000000 copies. In cart was turned into a hollywood film the chico produced another unusual experience for the author. Recently she fulfilled a long cherished dream and bought an avocado farm in malibu today Cornelia Funke is one of the most successful fantasy writers in the world she has fans everywhere and not all of them are children and young people. For us not even indian market i remember going to india and all of a sudden all these people between the age of 21 says she was asking if they could have me up to know and they thanked me saying that i was their child a king tide been in out of their hands i had the same thing in germany of a van how can that be in the street the reality is. India is so different because and yet my books are in fact shaped by german reality or american reality and not by reality in india for me its a question thats still a big mystery to me that i was once when i was in one of the heart of mexico i found myself weeping and one of the and in fact the readers there understood exactly what i was writing about every question they asked me revealed a depth of understanding that ive rarely encountered anywhere else on the land to me it seems like that in places or countries where life isnt always easy where people are still forced to grapple with those Big Questions our guilt good and evil violence via all the existential questions you often find that people have a very profound understanding of literature and it was 1st in political put their literature is not Just Entertainment in order to hide. Got her start illustrating childrens books more than 30 years ago she soon realized that she wanted to write to. A fancy out of many of those stories didnt match my pictures or were just very realistic at the time in germany fantasy was very much looked down upon its an interesting phenomenon in germany we tend to distance ourselves from our history of fantasy from e. T. A. Hoffmann of the grimms fairy tales of one comes from making in money ended up just at the time writing fantasy was frowned upon to write and yet theres a long tradition in on endless very long and usually when i tell english journalists about this they say but your great fantasy storytellers are such a tale out not all of her books are fantasy in 1903 she wrote the 1st while chick spoke about a gang of girls and their rivalry with a gang of boys and their encounters with occasionally aggravating adults. There are now 5 in the series and 3 have been filmed. In this one the girls and boys are now teenagers dealing with the Emotional Turmoil of romance. The film has been praised for taking the emotional lives of their young protagonist seriously as have the books. Ghost hunters is a fantasy series about 2 boys and a girl who fight against who would have guessed ghosts its also been adapted for the screen. You were ready for to go so. Hands off mississippi which was published in german in 1997 and turned into a film a decade later seems almost Old Fashioned by comparison. Its also about a gang of kids. Shooting once easy. To find a shady character lurking about the number on my machine i hear. Much about my Computers Read up on the audience and since im out. Of featuring a lot of slapstick and a deal of summer scenery this is ranked among the best cornelia from the adaptations. I found. At the start of her career Cornelia Funke i had to write 3 or 4 books a year to support her family all of them were a hit in germany. International breakthrough came with the thief lord a fast paced novel about growing up and sticking together. The main protagonist is scipio the leader of a gang of orphans in venice who go through a bunch of adventures together for. Them on the miss 100 child who has suffered abuse or deprivation reads a bit like. The flawed and her other children tell me they never had a family up but they read the book and suddenly understood what it must feel like mine that a book has given the child a kind of safe space in a space theyve never experienced but they can still find some of their own reality and a cunt that children dont want false illusions i cant take them seriously. If thats when i get letters like this from readers i realize im also talking about the terrible things of our world but that has to be a part of a fantasy writer god or. The thief lord was the 1st of cordelia focus books to be translated into english that was in 2000 to 3 years later she was included on time magazines list of the worlds 100 most influential people alongside bill Clinton Nelson mandela and the dalai lama. She had one fans around the world and a few critics. A common fan i received a letter from a young fan who said shed love to thier floor to read it why was there only one girl and asked me to and then. I felt really guilty. I thought oh look youve been doing the same as all women we like boys so we write about boys and turn them into the heroes of our stories. Instead of saying im a female writer what and i have a female heroine of a fish so i promised the reader that my next hero would be a girl and that was made in current into thats the sort of the hook as that happened often you that readers young ones are older one is have made suggestions. Or you that is yes for example in my chick series a reader gross asking to see a shot is far better that happens every so often and it can be very inspiring and so on the readers get so immersed in the worlds ive created i often say that i hear my readers footsteps and heart beats and those worlds and sometimes they love them so passionately that they almost know more about them than i do as he 1st made up of his moods. And car turned cornelli a phone call into one of the worlds best known fantasy authors. In 2008 the magical tale about maybe and her father moan was adapted by hollywood with a big budget and special effects to match. Making and now have an unusual gift they can bring fictional characters to life but in return real people have to take their place that happened to make his mother i was grown up. And that night we were in the library. So i opened a copy book which was bought. Cars. For several chapters and i had nothing out. And they appeared out of nowhere. Book but circus band working for a new book too. Boys brought them out your voice brought them out of the book and her mother went to. The top works. Father and daughter set off to do everything to find her experiencing countless adventures involving lots of magic but violence to. Continue it didnt only want to write a book she wanted to send out a political message. In one of the themes of end heart is fascism about the gang in the mountains theyre not mad v. O. C. Theyre fascists. Theyve let my last without children they blackmail us with their husbands and our friends insist on them fight and thats whats most terrifying about dictators and fascism they attack us using the things were most proud of what we think of as our identity thats what we love most of us believe and they turn us into accomplices thats how fascism operate and thats what i depicted in incarceration and 10 in a house but i didnt call it by its name because i thought it would be more timeless this way if the smartest idea was there was supposed to be a 4th in cart book coming out i thought it was a trilogy and that it was over it was published i thought it too probably because in this tracing and painting have become more important to me again to get sort of sometimes i draw characters and dont know who they are and then they pop up in my books one is that a new way of working is not yes it is quite new to at some point i realized oh man there is a new in cart book emerging out of this. Its called the color of revenge and its about the struggle between words and images and which one is more powerful. Its not idea thats always fascinated me thats called and its found its way into encounters team what does it mean to write all we all written and its a nice way to engage with these ideas. What is stronger the word or the image that question is also explored in pans labyrinth. The story is set in spain and 9445 years after the fascists won the spanish civil war. It is a battle between good and evil in a world full of violence and horror. Of failure of resorts to fantasy to escape reality like in in cart the characters in focus both come alive and take her off to a magical realm than habited by a strange creature. The fallen sends her into dangerous situations that she has to master on her own just the film is a dark and terrifying world filled with all menace beauty. Can any affront has said she would only write the book if she was allowed to retain the films horror. For the next i said im not going to change anything in the story thats i will not make it younger yet i will not censor it and i will not remove the sexual elements what war against women looks like also named everything here am i pushing the film and i wont play down the violence because its the truth this is what violence looks like he doesnt have meant to size it he doesnt trivialize or glorify evil thats why i had my again without tara. In del toros film there are some terrifying scenes like this one went off failure and counters and eyeless monster in an underground room. After she eats one of the forbidding fruits the monster rises from its lethargy. Its 1st victims are the fairies that are supposed to accompany and protect a failing of. The family get insect to be the next victim. The monster has it in for all the children of this world. Is this new book still appropriate for a young audience with all the brutal scenes and the historical background of spanish fascism. Camellia focus says neither the film nor the book are intended for a specific age group. And she doesnt like being labeled as only a writer for children and young adults even though that can sometimes have its advantage. In mine and usually my english publisher once i put it very nicely canadia do you know whats the difference between an author for children and an author for grownups as i said we know that whats the difference he said the authors were children love their audience or and i think theres Something Else assisting about the adult book about art and what we found out sometimes they are really ugly rivalries between all says of him ive never seen that in childrens books i think as i got there is most solidarity what its almost like a guilty theres a lot of love for the crime of it and i think its wonderful and human of will know about this and thats why i usually say yes i write for children but adults are welcome to read my post to you know that makes me a bit of a literary outcast just like children are but i can live with that helps and i have a kind of good. I can only a fun can sometimes feels that fantasy is under rated as a genre. I think that there is still a lot of misunderstanding people say oh its escapism and all that readers want to live in another world cups or thats absurd because there is no other world to govern whatever we think. Even if its another planet its always an interpretation of this world and always a love letter to this World Leaders he does deserve it i deserve this world is what feeds our imaginations what is our only source of inspiration way. And this world is so multifaceted and unbelievable that we can only express a tiny part of this magic i do the thoughts when i was just think as were sitting on a planet that speeding past a viable and there is an exploding sun above us somewhere and theres probably a fly on the wall here watching us in slow motion inside to proceed all of this is reality right. I think that fantasy just makes that more apparent whereas realistic narratives tend to focus on human reality and often have to do with a very concrete historical moment of. His talk moment because one dimensional there are very one dimensional as id say we need to find a concept of reality thats a lot more multidimensional is especially at a time when were destroying pretty much everything thats not human and humane or and just think about it for a moment and you know what was here 15 years ago and what might be left 15 years from now. And our concept of time and space everything belongs together if were to really comprehend reality his fantasy makes it easier to ask those Big Questions decide whats big and important whats evil whats good about you you can bring the dead back as go say way shakespeare did you can speak to all those aspects of existence that excess tens of. Often works on several projects at once. But these days are social projects are just as important to her especially her artist in residence program. She offers artists from all over the world a chance to stay at her farm for a couple of weeks. In my mind ive always wanted to live in a village together with all my creative friends i have lots of friends who make animated movies or music or they write on the other many of my guests are friends or artists i know off the guest and bringing them together ive found is even more exciting than i had imagined it would be special im not. Living in the United States was another of her dreams. Came true for her in 2005. When she moved there with her family. But not quite a year later her husband unexpectedly died for nearly a phone call was left alone with their 2 children. In the harbor i always loved the u. S. Even when i came here on my 1st but because i love how open the people are and i love the conviction that you can solve any problem on. Their way of seeing problems as a challenge not an obstacle that another day is still an enduring faith in the future that even if its sometimes hard to find these days. And above all i love the friendliness and everyday life and its not insincere its very true and genuine. And ive come to love being in a country of immigrants face that and its such a colorful and divesting and culturally rich environment that i live in every day in los angeles 128. 00 languages are spoken here and just label and you never know what kind of life story a person might have to tell you because 51 i wouldnt want to miss out on all of that. But American Society has been undergoing major changes in recent years. The gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider. Countless thousands are living on the streets. Racists are growing bolder and flaunting their hatred in public. African americans are trying to defend themselves against violence the protest often ends in clashes. Battle lines are being drawn and hardening. And since Donald Trump Took Office as president in 2017 the country has become even more to. Sided. With an america whats good about america is of course that it has a very strong tradition of rebellion and not of it being installed for some who has it right now the resistance is just as strong as the other side. Both sides do exist but they do in germany now to. Want to vent here i said immigration is good thats you know at last germany will get a bit more diverse to alert us to is that i could hear that once i got very quiet while the other got a very loud we have this polarization now all over the world to put it on a high but there are all sorts of things you can do politically and at the moment im supporting the lawyers that are trying to protect and help the children the Migrant Children from the lawyers who are trying to reach the children and support their mothers yeah id rather be putting my money towards Environmental Protection but this is whats needed in this political situation im very active politically active thats my only consolation of course and then i also live in california the out of control state state. California has introduced strict Environmental Standards for cars President Trump wants them revoked opposition is also strong in california against the trumpet ministrations hard line immigration policy which include expediting the deportation of undocumented immigrants especially from latin america. Take the battle is now out in the ohio valley for that california is fighting it and thats why i still like living here. In autumn 2017 cornelie a phone call followed her dream of life in the countryside and bought a farm near malibu its hurt not so little slice of heaven shes got sunshine and green all year round as long as the bush fires dont come too close. Isnt that why. Im best of all here are away from the big city she finds peace and tranquility. Get with you ever return to germany night its been you know im not someone who goes back in the human the kind of person who always goes forward and in 5 years i might be living in new zealand but i would never go back if i tried to explain it to children like this take a look at the world and how big it is i spend 45 years in one single country life and thats not all that inspiring i should have tried out a few more. And if i do i hope ill have the courage and thirst for adventure to try out something totally different once again. In december 28000