The Bloomsday Film Festival, the most literary film festival in Ireland, announces its programme of events from Wednesday 11th to Sunday 16th June.
Highlights this year include a magical pre-cinematic wonder ‘Ulysses: A Magic Lantern Show’ with live music, Eanna Hardwicke and Olwyn Fouré as part of a special poetry showcase, a live performance from Dublin poet Stephen James Smith and a trip back in time with a screening of the first films ever projected at Joyce’s Volta Cinema plus much more.
The Bloomsday Film Festival, run in partnership with the Bloomsday Festival and the James Joyce Centre offers a unique festival experience blending film and literature in celebration of James Joyce’s relationship with cinema and the city of Dublin.
Festivities commence with a launch party on Wednesday 11th June from 6pm at the James Joyce Centre. The night will feature amedley of unique entertainment including a performance from the Giorgi Aleksidze Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet company, music from David Keenan and Gramophone Dublin Social with a drinks reception sponsored by Writers Tears.
From Thursday 12th -Saturday 15th June, the opulent surroundings of the Belvedere Townhouse, Great Denmark St, Dublin 1, will play host to an eclectic array of over 60 short films and features from Ireland and throughout the world( Japan, Brazil, Estonia, Canada to name but a few) ranging from stories about Dublin to films with a Joycean, literary, poetic and experimental theme.The venue is especially apt as it is where Joyce studied as a boy when he attended Belvedere College- the school features in his novel Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.
Dublin Focus
Every year the festival celebrates Joyce’s beloved city of Dublin with a programme of short films themed Dublin Short Stories.
Brian Gleeson stars in the affecting I Found A Place, Zoe Gibney’s debut film about a man trying to make a new life in Dublin while Conveyance by Gemma Creagh, a comedy featuring a young couple struggling to find a home, takes a slightly more light hearted look at the housing crisis. Sophie Meehan’s Young People of Ireland , takes us back in time for a playful exploration of underground responses to social mores in 1970s Ireland, told through a day in the life of two young women. The Un-chaotic Cabinet that Wishes for me to Sleep is a beautiful animation by Dublin filmmaker Cillian Green which follows a young adult struggling with his identity making his way through suburban Dublin hoping to clear his head. Cúan de Búrca’s gorgeously noirish Irish language film Sruth Na Life ( The Liffey Flow) meditates on Dublin past and present, the flow of the Liffey, the flow of time, and the poet, surgeon and conversationalist Oliver St-John Gogarty. Canadian filmmaker Godfrey Jordan documents the story of Dublin legend Bang-Bang ( AKA Thomas Dudley) with the help of Liberties resident Paddy McAvinue in The Liberties of Paddy and Bang-Bang
As part of the poetry programme, viral Tik Tok poet Mikey Cullen stars in City in Crisis, a short film by Louis O’Flynn-Martin.
Ballyfermot filmmaker, Tanya Notaro writes, directs, co-produces and stars in Postpartum, an experimental short which delves into post-childbirth horrors. Godfrey Jordan examines Joyce’s spiritual leanings in James Joyce and the Jesuits and his promo Saving Sweny’s features a call out for donations to keep the famous Sweny’s Pharmacy as featured in ‘Ulysses’ from closing down.
Bloomsday Film Festival collaborates with the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation to produce poetry films inspired by the works of Joyce and the spirit of modern Dublin — his self-proclaimed ‘Universal City’. This special screening as part of the festival includes the short poetry Cities Unlimited written by poet Stephen James Smith, read by Leah Minto, directed by Luke De Brún. Other films being screened star actors Eanna Hardwicke and Olwen Fouéré. Stephen James Smith will perform live at the event.
A Volta Cineconcert
While it is now well known that James Joyce managed Ireland’s first dedicated cinema, the Volta Cinematograph, which opened in Dublin’s Mary Street in 1908, very little is generally known about the films that screened there and what influence early cinema might have had on Joyce’s art.
This year the festival and the IFI will screen seven short films which have been identified as Volta material and preserved by the British Film Institute, on Monday 16th June at 6.30pm.
The programme, featuring comedies, religious and historical dramas and news films from 1909, includes Une Pouponnière à Paris; A Glass of Goat’s Milk; The Way of the Cross and Pêche aux Crocodiles. These films will have live piano accompaniment by Morgan Cooke.
The programme will be introduced by Joycean scholar Dr Keith Williams (Dundee University) and early cinema historian Dr Denis Condon (Maynooth University), and the screening will be preceded by a Writers Tears’ Whiskey reception.
Feature Films at Bloomsday 2025
On Thursday 13th June 7pm at Belvedere Townhouse, Great Denmark St, Dublin 1, a screening will take place of Áine Stapleton’s Horrible Creatures. The feature 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, and the director will be on hand for a post-screening Q and A.
Then on Sunday 15th June 5pm at the same venue, Songs of Blood & Destiny will screen. Based on Marina Carr’s epic poem, iGirl, Beckettian in style, the writer unravels her life like some knotted ball of string, and reflects with dark humour and wit on the legacy of her own work and that of homo sapiens, evoking voices past and future, while contemplating the possible extinction of both at our own hand. This screening will be followed by a Q & A with director Trish McAdams.
Three new feature films will also be on exhibition in the Volta Room in the James Joyce Centre for Bloomsday – Monday 16th June as a free, walk-in event:
9am Ulysses (2022), Bettina Gracias, 105 min, United Kingdom
10.45am James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Chapter 3 (2025), Adam Seelig, James Joyce, 81 min, Ireland
12.05pm Bloomsday Zoomplay (2025), Pádraig G Finlay, 57 min, Canada
Afternoon repeat from 1.30pm
With a unique performance in celebration of Ulysses with original lantern slides and a collaborative talk, Keith Williams (University of Dundee) discussing the key influence of the Magic Lantern on the cinematic features of Joyce’s writing with Jeremy Brooker (former chair of the Magic Lantern Society), the festival will run all the way from the very earliest days of visual storytelling to fresh new Irish filmmaking talents.
Tickets for the Bloomsday Film Festival are priced from €5 and a Season Ticket is €30 which includes access to ALL events including the Launch Party and Awards Ceremony.
More information and tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/o/bloomsday-film-festival-66574521173
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