The IFI is celebrating Joyce and Cinema with three film strands to coincide with Bloomsday 2012, all featuring films being preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive. The expiration of copyright covering much of Joyce’s written work is provoking a new wave of interest in his writing’s manifestations. The IFI will be screening Mary Ellen Bute’s Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, presenting a selection of Joycean short films as part of the IFI’s free Archive at Lunchtime series and rereleasing John Huston’s The Dead.
The Dead (rereleased from 15-21st June) is John Huston’s magisterial 1987 adaptation of the final of Joyce’s Dubliners stories. Capturing the small triumphs and tragedies of middle-class Dublin life at the start of the twentieth century through a wide range of characters, Joyce’s story works up to a powerful dénouement on a much grander emotional scale. Starring Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston, it’s an unmissable adaptation of a masterpiece of short fiction.
June’s Monthly Must-See Cinema slot, which showcases highlights from the Irish cinema canon which are now preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive, is Mary Ellen Bute’s Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (16th June 14.00). The film selects a series of passages from the book and illustrates them almost literally in a dazzling dream-like film style. Passages from Finnegans Wake represents the first attempt to adapt a work of James Joyce as a feature film and was honoured as best debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965.
June’s Archive at Lunchtime is an array of short fiction, animation and documentary films inspired by the work of James Joyce in two programmes which alternate on Mondays and Wednesdays at 13.10 with a double-bill on Saturday throughout June.
Tickets for The Dead and Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake are available at normal IFI prices. Tickets for IFI Archive at Lunchtime are free but can be reserved. Contact IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477 or online at http://www.ifi.ie/ to book your tickets.
