Un drame dans les airs

Hanns Zischler presents: "James Joyce, daily news, and the faits divers of cinema"

October 20, 2008
 
A special evening on the cross-fertilization between Early Cinema, newspaper culture around 1900 and modern literature. The Berlin-based writer and actor Hanns Zischler will present his new book A Nose for News. Miscellaneous from James Joyce, released by Zsolnay Publishing and the Film Museum. Several restored films from 1902 to 1905 will be screened, including films by Georges Méliès and Gaston Velle.
 
The book, written by Zischler and the literary scholar Sara Danius, offers a unique look at James Joyce as a young man: From October 1904 to March 1905, Joyce spent half a year in the "god-forsaken" naval town of Pula on the Istrian coast. He taught English at the local Berlitz school – and “devoured” films and newspapers. Following Zischler’s acclaimed book Kafka Goes to the Movies (1996), the new volume again offers extraordinary insights into a great author’s development. The book shows how Joyce, in the midst of the Austrian empire’s fading glory and in the daily jumble of printed and projected faits divers, discovered a new form of narrative which was to revolutionize the culture of modernity.
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