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![Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake Mary Ellen Bute, USA Black and White, 90 minutes, 1965](http://otherfilm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/meb-passages1-454x320.jpg)
The Printed Signal
Details
Part of | Seeing Sound |
Where | State Library of Queensland. Brisbane, Australia. |
Date | Wednesday, 19 December 2007 |
Visual music pioneer Mary Ellen Bute’s final film was also her first feature film. James Joyce’s classic story of Irish tavern-keeper who dreams of attending his own wake is brought to the screen with a sparkling energy which highlights its maker’s career-long exploration of kinetic abstract animation. Perhaps best described as a ‘film poem,’ Passages from Finnegans Wake was the first attempt to ‘cinematize’ the works of James Joyce, featuring the author’s highly original language spoken by characters and presented as text on screen.
The Printed Signal - WORKS
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90 Min
“Passages is a trove of superimpositions, flashbacks, varied angles, slow motion, intercutting, rapid motion, stop action, negative images, documentary footage, and finally sub-titles … It brings in television, the H-bomb, the twist, interplanetary rockets. Bute believed that Joyce would have…