The work of a troubled novelist who drowned herself after jumping off the Palace Pier will be celebrated at a film festival.

Experimental writer Ann Quin, a contemporary of Samuel Beckett, wrote classic novel Berg while working as a secretary at a Brighton solicitors’ firm.

Despite a mental breakdown before its publication in 1964 she become one of the most original modern British writers.

But she died in 1973 aged 37 the novel fell out of print and her stature faded.

Now the Cinecity Brighton Film Festival is marking the 50th anniversary of the novel.

Production designer Anna Deamer has made a film set installation for an imaginary screen version of Ann Quin’s novel, with sound design from Barry Adamson, of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

The disturbing, darkly comic novel is set in a boarding house in off-season Brighton.

The set, through which the audience can wander, has been built with City College Brighton and Hove and carpenter Steve Deane, whose movie credits include Captain Phillips.

Meanwhile the Foredown Tower in Portslade will host an exploration of Brighton-based author Kay Dick’s novel They: A Sequence of Unease.

The 12th Cinecity has a world cinema slant and a programme of premieres and previews, screenings and events.

It opens with the premiere of Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, a black comedy about an actor (Michael Keaton) famous for portraying a superhero who struggles to mount a Broadway play.

The Tribe is a Ukrainian debut film with only sign language and no spoken dialogue prized at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

British films The Goob, Snow in Paradise, Catch Me Daddy and Testament of Youth are all in the festival.

CINECITY runs from November 20 to December 7. Visit www.cine-city.co.uk