Irish Film Institute -IRISH FOCUS: SHEM THE PENMAN SINGS AGAIN

IRISH FOCUS: SHEM THE PENMAN SINGS AGAIN

Director: Pádraig Trehy

80 mins, Ireland, 2015, Colour & Black and White, Digital


This film screened 13th January 2016.

Join us for our focus on new Irish film and filmmakers.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of James Joyce’s death (on January 13th, 1941) we present this energetic
new work exploring the actual and much-fabled friendship between the writer and the extraordinary Irish tenor, John McCormack. McCormack inspires the character of Shaun the Post in Joyce’s famously ‘unreadable’ final novel Finnegans Wake, in which Joyce portrayed himself as Shaun’s lowly twin brother, Shem. Joyce’s twin obsessions, singing and literary experimentation, flow through the film as the friends’ encounters are reimagined in a variety of early cinematic styles and animated by a mix of archive recordings and imaginary radio broadcasts.

Director Pádraig Trehy will be present for a post-screening Q&A.

See here for a screening of The Dead on January 6th.

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