RTÉ Television and Radio celebrate Bloomsday 100

On Wednesday, June 16th this year, the world will celebrate the centenary of Bloomsday, that extraordinary date on which, in 1904, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus journeyed through the streets of Dublin. It was an epic journey, both for those characters and for the millions of readers of James Joyce's "Ulysses" who have followed their trip over the past 100 journeys.

RTÉ Radio and Television will mark Bloomsday 100 with a comprehensive line-up of special programming on Television, Radio, a CD launch and dedicated pages on the RTÉ website. Speaking about this broad range of celebratory programming, RTÉ's Director-General, Cathal Goan, said:

"No fictional date is more celebrated throughout the world than 16 June, Bloomsday, rightly celebrated as it forms the spine of Ulysses - internationally recognised as the greatest fictional work of the last century. It is appropriate that RTÉ would mark the centenary of Bloomsday by bringing the life and work of its author, James Joyce, to as wide an audience as possible - through Radio and Television broadcasts, recordings and the world-wide web. We are proud to bring the best of our previous works on Joyce together with exciting new recordings to the Irish audience and to those interested in Irish literature and studies world-wide. Like Ulysses itself, many of these recordings will stand the test of time."

RTÉ TELEVISION AND BLOOMSDAY 100
RTÉ Television presents a special line-up of programming aiming to strike a delicate balance between enhancing a popular understanding and appreciation of 'Ulysses' and sating the great, academic thirst for literary and biographical material on James Joyce.

The specially commissioned 'Imagining Ulysses' will provide the fulcrum to the week-long celebration, making the academic accessible in a highly entertaining, innovative way; Seán Ó Mordha provides us with two seminal documentaries - a re-mastered version of the Emmy-Award winning 'Is There One Who Understands Me' and the newly-commissioned 'James Joyce. Silence, Exile, Cunning', which offers a different perspective to his first documentary, centering on Ireland, Europe and the World of Bloomsday, 1904; Bloomsday Cabaret is a musical exploration of 'Ulysses' featuring well-known musicians and performers; A newly re-mastered Sylvia Beach interview, 'The View Presents: Sylvia Beach, Self Portrait' is a rare treat for Joyce aficionados, and the television celebration will also include the broadcast of 'Nora', the critically-acclaimed feature film of Joyce's life with Nora Barnacle, starring Ewan McGregor and Susan Lynch.

Imagining Ulysses
- Wednesday June 16th, 21.30. RTÉ One.
Produced by David Blake Knox and Hilary Fennell, Blueprint Pictures.

This documentary film was specially commissioned by RTÉ as the fulcrum of Bloomsday 100 programming. Like Joyce's novel, 'Imagining Ulysses' takes the form of 18 different 'episodes' and, like the original, each of these is designed to have its own distinctive theme and style. Narrated by Brenda Fricker, with Patrick Bergin as the voice of Joyce, the overall intent of the film is to honour the spirit of the book - in an imaginative, accessible and original way.

One 'episode' in the documentary features a tabloid TV talk show - á la Jerry Springer - where Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence defend their harsh critiques of Joyce. Another segment tells the story of a love affair in communist China, between translators Wen Jieruo and Hsaio Ch'ien, with Ulysses as the backdrop. Yet another uses the format of 'The Osbournes' to relate the story of Joyce's own family. A performance by Gavin Friday forms the backdrop for a piece on racism in Ireland - in 1904 - and 100 years later.

Contributors include Neil Jordan, Roddy Doyle, Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, Camille Paglia, Edna O'Brien, and Frank McCourt, as well as a variety of familiar Irish women in the 'Penelope' segment, reading phrases from Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy.

Is There One Who Understands Me?
- Sunday, June 13th, 15.40. RTÉ Network 2
A documentary by Sean O' Mordha.
An Araby Production for RTÉ.

The seminal, Emmy-award winning RTÉ documentary, produced and directed by Seán Ó Mórdha, has been enhanced for rebroadcast in honour of the Centenary. The film explores Joyce's life and influences and was shot on location in Dublin, Trieste, Rome, Zurich, Paris and London in 1982.

Close friends and relatives of Joyce co-operated with the production and certain writers who knew Joyce in Europe appear on television for the first time. Much of the material used has been acquired exclusively by RTÉ, including previously unknown visual material relating to Joyce's childhood years in Dublin, his Trieste period and twenty year stay in Paris, establishing this programme as a unique document on the life and times of James Joyce.

James Joyce. Silence, Exile and Cunning
- Tues, June 15th, 22.30. RTÉ One.
A documentary by Sean O' Mordha.
An Araby Production for RTÉ.

Sean Ó' Mórdha mines Joycean territory again, over twenty years later, utilizing his vast knowledge and unique connections with Joyce's world, to create a snapshot of Ireland, Europe and the Joyces in 1904. "James Joyce: Silence, Exile and Cunning," hones in on Bloomsday, the most significant day of Joyce's life, when Nora Barnacle 'made a man of me'.

The Joyces' lives, the lives of the people of Dublin and beyond, the political, popular, social events of the day will be brought back to life in this new film.

The View Presents: Sylvia Beach, self portrait
- Monday June 14th, 23.35. RTÉ One.
RTÉ Archive. Duration: 24 minutes.

The legendary Parisian book shop, Shakespeare and Company was founded by charming bibliophile Sylvia Beach, who grew up privileged in New Jersey but made her life in Paris. Throughout the 1920s, the Paris literati frequented her shop: George Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Paul Valèry, André Gide and of course James Joyce. It was Sylvia Beach who first agreed to publish Joyce's oeuvre 'Ulysses' in a period of extreme literary censorship, when the English-speaking world was refusing to print what they saw as pornographic filth. Her boldness paid off, as 'Ulysses' became an immediate success. (Later, it was Ernest Hemingway who managed to infiltrate the States with Ulysses - together with a friend, he smuggled the contraband copies across the border from Canada in their trouser legs)!

In this 'Self Portrait' from 1962, Beach tells how, in 1941, Paris was under Nazi occupation and most writers had either been conscripted or had fled. Beach kept plying her book trade until one morning a Nazi officer came in to buy her last copy of 'Finnegan's Wake'. She refused to sell it, and he ordered that the shop be closed down. That very same day, Sylvia Beach with the help of friends, removed all books from the store and painted over the sign of Shakespeare and Company. When the Nazi returned with reinforcements to close the store down two hours later there was no evidence that the shop had ever existed.

This RTÉ Archive gem from 1962 has been re-mastered especially for the Bloomsday centenary and provides a rich context for the original publication of 'Ulysses'.

Bloomsday Cabaret
- Sunday Jun 13th RTÉ One, 24.00
Directed by Rosemary House.

'Bloomsday Cabaret', a Canadian film, tells the story of music in the life and literature of James Joyce, who was a well-respected singer with a fine tenor voice. His wife Nora famously said, "Jim should have stuck to music instead of bothering with writing". Uptight scholars throughout the years have struggled to reconcile Joyce's complex art with his love for popular songs and music hall tunes.

Juxtaposing 'high' art with popular culture, 'Bloomsday Cabaret' provides a glimpse into the complex Joycean universe through utterly simple and straightforward songs of love, war, struggle and loss, desire and betrayal, all sung by 'the man on the street' as well as by Mr. Joyce himself.

This is the music Joyce played and sang, and this is the music he put in the hearts and minds of his characters.

The View
A special edition of 'The View' reviews 'Ulysses' the book.
- Wednesday, June 16th, 23.30PM. RTÉ One.

Panellists are film director Jim Sheridan, Eileen Battersby, literary correspondent of the Irish Times and Dublin historian, Gerry O' Flaherty.

Also featuring a specially commissioned piece by comedian Kevin Mc Aleer.

Readings by Gerard Mannix Flynn and Christine Noble.

Music by soprano, Judith Mock, accompanied by Dearbhla Collins.

Nora
- Saturday, June 12th. 24.00. RTÉ One.
Directed by Pat Murphy. Written by Gerry Stembridge. Starring: Ewan McGregor, Susan Lynch and Peter MacDonald.

This extraordinary story of the intense love affair between scandalous James Joyce and the servant girl who became his life long lover and muse, stars Ewan McGregor and Susan Lynch.

Joyce is tormented by a fear his work will never be published but Nora's simplicity and humour anchor his instability, and they are bonded by a deep sexual love. Joyce's complex temperament leads him to irrationally distrust Nora and his attraction to the theme of betrayal motivates his work. Nora, faithful and devout is the one who is being betrayed-in Joyce's manipulation of her as fuel for his writing. Ultimately their love is all consuming and conquers all.

"Nora" is an Irish/German/Italian co-production, produced by Nylon Films in association with the Independent Production Unit of RTÉ.


RTÉ RADIO AND BLOOMSDAY 100
As Ireland and the world marks this centenary, RTÉ Radio will be at the fore of the celebrations, with a number of exciting programmes and initiatives aimed at helping fans get more from Joyce's writings.

Reading Ulysses
RTÉ Radio 1 is presenting Reading Ulysses, a new 20-part weekly series which began on Thursday, April 22. Over the course of the series, Dublin historian Gerry O'Flaherty and Fritz Senn, Director of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, are providing an episode by episode guide to the classic novel, illustrated by extracts and music from its pages. The final programme will be a feature on the music of Ulysses and will be produced by RTÉ lyric fm.

Ulysses Recording
In 1982 RTÉ broadcast a fully dramatised, unabridged and uninterrupted reading of Joyce's most enduring work, featuring actors and actresses from the RTÉ players. At the total length of thirty hours it ranks as one of the longest speech broadcasts ever produced, and certainly one of the most ambitious and artistically rich. Hearing passages interpreted by actors helps the reader appreciate the complex, lyrical nature of the book and adds a new dimension to the reader's understanding of the text. In honour of the Bloomsday centenary, this historic recording will be released as a €100, 32 CD set available from the beginning of June at good book and record stores nation-wide, as well as a 3 MP3CD set for €50.

The Weekend Feature: Joyce - The Songlines
More than in the work of most writers, music flowed through the works of James Joyce. Writer and broadcaster Kevin O'Connor uncovers the music of Joyce's Dublin and Ireland on RTÉ lyric fm in two programmes, to be broadcast on Sunday 6 June and Sunday 13 June at 3pm. (First broadcast in 2001)

Horizons
Bernard Clarke probes Joyce's influence on 20th century composers such as Barber, Szymanowski, Boulez, Cage, Berio, CaRTÉr and Takemitsu in a RTÉ lyric fm Horizons special to be broadcast on Sunday 13 June at 9.30pm

The Book on One
The Joyce We Knew, edited by Ulick O'Connor and published by Brandon Books will feature from Monday 14 June - Friday 18 June in the Book On One slot, RTÉ Radio 1, 11.25pm each evening. The book is a collection of reminiscences by some of Joyce's friends and contemporaries, giving an insight into his personality and bringing to light many of his less well-known characteristics. The book will be read by Ulick O'Connor.

Walking out Together
Bloomsday may have been the starting point of Leopold Bloom's quest through Dublin but it also marks the first meeting of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. Walking Out Together is a new play by Aidan Matthews about their first blind date. It goes out at 7.00pm RTÉ Radio 1 on Bloomsday itself, Wednesday, June 16 and looks set to cast the legendary author in a new light.

Molly, I Hardly Knew Ya
Molly, I Hardly Knew Ya is a new ten-part series on RTÉ Radio 1 in which contemporary writers share their thoughts on Molly Bloom and the world of Ulysses in general. It promises to add a whole new dimension to one of the most important characters in world literature and goes on air from Thursday June 17.

Joyce Songs - James Joyce's Musical Dublin
RTÉ lyric fm marks Bloomsday in its own inimitable style with Joyce Songs, a CD celebration of the music that Joyce lived his life to. Mixing drinking songs and music hall numbers with opera arias, the collection serves as a musical backdrop to the novel itself and reinforces its musical heart. It will retail at €17.99 in all good record stores and will feature a number of songs that have never before been recorded.

These new programmes and CDs will celebrate the art of James Joyce, re-presenting it in outstanding audio quality and introducing it to a new generation of readers and listeners.

Issued by RTÉ Communications, 28 May 2004

Further information:

Jennifer Taaffe
RTÉ Radio,
T: 01 208 2312
M: 087 968 2085

Dearbhla Keating
RTÉ Television,
T: 01-208-2667