Cinema's first Jane Austen adaptation directed by a woman, Mansfield Park is the fourth feature film from Patricia Rozema, the adventurous Canadian director of I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and White Room. Determined that her new film would not be "another Jane Austen garden party" dominated by period trappings, Rozema went back to Austen herself as she set about bringing the book to the screen. Realising that she could not hope to capture it in its entirety as a movie, Rozema drew on Austen's own letters and journals to infuse the film - and the central character, Fanny Price - with the author's independence of spirit and sly sense of humour.