Book fair welcomes the film world

FRANKFURT, Germany — The world’s biggest book fair is binding itself closer to the silver screen.

For the first time, literary agents at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year are making Hollywood-style pitches to film producers on behalf of their authors.

“The fair is becoming more and more a media fair, and not just about books,” said Anna-Katharina Werdnik, the fair’s film and TV project manager.

Fair officials announced that in 2006 they will partner with the Berlin Film Festival, swapping representatives at the two events to further encourage cooperation between the industries.

Shakespeare, Orwell, Hemingway and Ludlum have all had their work made into movies over the past century. But it was not until Friday that the Frankfurt fair had a dedicated Hollywood-style forum for adapting books into films.

About two dozen producers from across Europe listened to presentations from agents such as Petra Hermann in the hope of discovering a novel suitable to make into a film.

Hermann, co-founder of the Scripts for Sale agency in Hamburg and Frankfurt, spent her allotted 10 minutes trying to sell five German books.

“We have to connect the books and the moviemakers because we’re telling stories and they’re looking for them,” she said later.