Our friends at The Bloomsday Film Festival have an incredible lineup of events next week, and they’ve kindly given us a few pairs of tickets to give away for one of their exciting screenings: Horrible Creature + Q&A with Áine Stapleton
- Thursday, June 12th, 7pm
- Belvedere College, Dublin
To win, simple email info@filmireland.ie with “Bloomsday Competition” in the subject bar, and answer the following question:
Q: Which Swiss city, mentioned in the film, was central to Lucia Joyce’s early life?
Horrible Creature and Q&A with Áine Stapleton
In 1915, James Joyce and Nora Barnacle travelled with their young children, Giorgio and Lucia, to Switzerland to escape the turmoil of World War I. Lucia Joyce later trained as a professional dancer with artists including Margaret Morris, and performed throughout Europe, until her career ended suddenly in the early 1930s. She was forced into psychiatric care by her brother and underwent experimental treatments at various hospitals across Europe. She remained in psychiatric care for 47 years until her death in 1982.
Horrible Creature was filmed at locations throughout Switzerland where Lucia spent time, including her primary school in Zurich and a psychiatric hospital near Geneva. Here, Lucia’s own writings and experiences are interpreted by a cast of international experimental dance artists to conjure her world between 1915 and 1950. The film fearlessly explores her difficult family life, her unproven illness, and her undoubted talent.
This film is one of a series of films about Lucia Joyce by Áine Stapleton, which challenge the accepted biography of Lucia’s life and consider the complexity of her mental strain.
“A stunning visual experience” Film Ireland
“Visual, sensory, vicarious, disorienting, disturbing …. Go see it!” James Joyce Gazette
“as poetic as it is beguiling” Tages-Anzeiger
Runtime: 65 minutes
Tickets are €8.
Read more about this event here.
About Bloomsday Film Festival
Whenever I am obliged to lie with my eyes closed I see a cinematograph going on and on and it brings back to my memory things I had almost forgotten.’ – James Joyce
Ireland’s most literary film festival was set up as a celebration of cinema, literature, and artistic innovation, inspired by the long reaching arm of Ireland’s Father of modernism, James Joyce. The festival is run in partnership with the Bloomsday Festival & the James Joyce Centre and will run between the 11th – 16th June, with screenings taking place at the historic James Joyce Centre and the IFI. Read more about this festival here.
