Dublin, Tuesday, 16 June, 2020: A new film has been released to mark Bloomsday 2020, featuring voices from around the globe performing lines from James Joyce’s Ulysses.
16 June 2020 marks a Bloomsday like no other. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) have partnered to create ‘A New Day Will Be: A Short Film for Bloomsday 2020’, to bring Ulysses to the world.
Using Joyce’s timeless words, with lines chosen for their resonance for the pandemic, the film offers a very contemporary take on Ulysses.
Performers from more than 40 locations across six continents join together to chart our universal, shared humanity as we journey through these extraordinary times: from silence, isolation, the desire for human touch and the quest for a vaccine, through remembrance and resilience, to hope, love and finally affirmation.
Published in 1922, Ulysses is widely regarded to be one of the greatest literary works in history. Named after the main character in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, Bloomsday celebrates the day on which the novel is set – 16 June. This book about a single day in Dublin has won fans from all over the world and each year, Joycean enthusiasts visit Ireland to immerse themselves in James Joyce’s Dublin.
‘A New Day Will Be: A Short Film for Bloomsday 2020’ is a result of a month-long collaboration with Irish Embassies and Consulates worldwide, and their networks of local partners. For each scene in the film, the location used echoes the original setting of the relevant episode of the novel. The island of Ireland features throughout, including shots from Dublin, Belfast and Ireland’s stunning coastline along the Wild Atlantic Way.
Performers include actors Olwen Fouéré and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor; former US Democratic Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke; novelist Colum McCann; leading actors from continental Europe including Yiannis Panagopoulos of the Greek National Theatre, Peter Bárnai from Budapest, Robert Roth from Bratislava, Ada Gales from Bucharest and Üllar Saaremäe from Tallinn; Indian actor Dalip Tahil; Aboriginal Australian artist Daniel Browning; Japanese kimono designer Satoko Baba; and performance artist Amanda Coogan. The original score is composed and performed by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.
Languages include Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, English, Estonian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Irish Sign Language, Japanese, Maltese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovene, Slovakian, Spanish and Swahili.
The original score is composed & performed by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh