Ulysses and I

A 24-hour film adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses by Caveh Zahedi

Tickets available here.

I have been wanting to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses into a film ever since I first read the book as a freshman in college. I have always dreamed of doing for cinema what Ulysses did for literature: explode the form. On the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of its publication, I am planning to do just that.

 

Ulysses tells the story of a day from the points of view of three different characters. The book is divided into 18 chapters, each chapter being a different hour of the day and each chapter being told in a radically different style.

 

The film adaptation of Ulysses will also take place over the course of a single day, June 16th, the same day as the events depicted in the book. Joyce chose to set his novel on that day because it was the day he went on his first date with his wife-to-be. Now known as Bloomsday, it has become a day in which Joyce lovers celebrate Ulysses with public readings and libations.

 

On the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of its publication, I will also be staging a theater production of Ulysses as part of the Bloomsday celebrations taking place that day and as part of the film adaptation that I will be shooting that same day. The film adaptation will tell the story of that day from the points of view of four of the actors in the stage production. Each of the actors will be followed by a film crew for the entire day from the moment of waking up to the moment of going to sleep. The film will be divided into 24 episodes, each telling the story of a different hour of the day and each in a radically different style.

 

I have assembled a team of 24 camera people and 16 sound people to capture the day’s events in the lives of these four intersecting characters. The play within the film will serve as the structuring device to tell the story of Joyce’s Ulysses, as well as the story of Homer’s The Odyssey of which the events in Joyce’s Ulysses were modernized retellings. The events of the day will thus be juxtaposed against those of its literary predecessors as a means of exploring what it means to be alive today.