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Film Screening – Left Bank: The Women Who Rescued James Joyce’s Ulysses

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Following the screening, there will be an opportunity to discuss the film with the film’s creator.

Left Bank: The Women Who Rescued James Joyce’s Ulysses investigates the publication and themes of Ulysses by James Joyce, one literature’s most celebrated and enigmatic works.  We’ve finished a 45-minute preview version and our film crew would be honored to show our film at the Stockbridge Public Library followed by a discussion of the themes of the film and novel.

Film synopsis:  
One hundred years since its publication in one volume by Sylvia Beach, an American bookseller in Paris, Ulysses is widely considered one of the most important novels in the English language, one that has attracted controversy and scrutiny and changed the world and the future of literature.

Left Bank tells the largely unknown story of the courageous women who helped shape and publish Ulysses when censorship laws prevented publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece. The film transports viewers to the fraught world of the early 20th century, the era the novel was conceived and written, unveiling the story of these women, some of whom, in spite of possible fines and jail terms, wholeheartedly supported the literary giant’s odyssey.  Thanks to their belief in Joyce’s genius, Ulysses became a best-selling international classic and a triumph of modernist literature.

Recent screenings of the Left Bank preview version (45 mins) took place at The Rosenbach Library and Museum in Philadelphia, PA; the international conference Joyce and Humanism in the 21st Century at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; the XV Italian James Joyce Foundation Conference in Rome and the International James Joyce Conference at Trinity College in Dublin.

We believe Left Bank will contribute to an intriguing understanding of how Ulysses was brought to the world.  When completed, we expect Left Bank to be 90 minutes.

If you’d be interested to watch Left Bank (preview version): https://youtu.be/PVBORXflK30

Lisa Reznik has directed four award-winning films which have been selected by 30+ film festivals and private screenings. Left Bank marks Reznik’s fifth film, and first hybrid-documentary. The passion project is the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of detailed research.