Loach returns to Irish theme

The outspoken English director, Ken Loach, is planning a film on the 1916 Rising. Titled The Stolen Republic, the film deals with events leading up to the Rising. The screenplay is by Jim Allen, the Marxist writer who scripted Loach's controversial Northern Ireland drama, Hidden Agenda, which was inspired by the John Stalker and Colin Wallace affairs.

"We have not yet determined a budget or started to raise finance," Rebecca O'Brien, who is producing The Stolen Republic, told Screen International. "We expect it to be funded in our normal pre-sales route and will start scouting locations in June."

Loach is also developing his first American-based project, Bread And Roses, which is set in Los Angeles during the 1980s "justice for janitors" campaign for the unionisation of office cleaning labour. The screenplay is by Paul Laverty, who has scripted two films for Loach - Carla's Song and My Name Is Joe, which won Peter Mullan the award for best actor at Cannes last week.

Ireland's first IMAX theatre opens to the public on Sunday in the Parnell Centre, Parnell Street, Dublin. The theatre, which seats 370, features a specially designed giant screen and state-of-the-art digital sound to exhibit the world's largest film format. The screen measures 62 ft x 82 ft, about eight times the size of the average cinema screen.

The theatre's opening attractions are the docu-drama Everest, which is narrated by Liam Neeson and details a hazardous expedition by climbers, scientists and filmmakers, and the underwater documentary, The Living Sea. For technical reasons, it was not possible to get a preview of either film before today's press screening. However, having attended the Lincoln Square IMAX theatre in Manhattan, I expect audiences are in for a thrilling audio-visual experience.

Crime pays (1): John Boorman's The General has opened to excellent business across the country, taking over £250,000 on its first four days on release in the State. Warner Bros, who are distributing the film here, said the results were all the more impressive given that the film opened on a bank holiday weekend when the weather was good in most parts of the country. Despite some outstanding reviews, the film opened weakly in Britain over the weekend. Incidentally, one of those UK reviews - by Tommy Udo in the rock weekly, NME - praised the "strong performance from (Brenda) Fricker as Cahill's long-suffering wife" - even though the role is played by Maria Doyle Kennedy.

Crime pays (2): Lee Ryan was a petty criminal awaiting trial when he won £6.5 million in the UK lottery. Now, after serving nine months in prison, Ryan has set up a production company, Jailbird Productions, to make a movie of his life story titled It Could Be You. Ryan's other business interests include a helicopter company, a social organisation for helicopter owners and a Cornish nightclub. In a unique marketing gimmick, Jailbird Productions promise their own version of the lottery, with one person who buys a ticket to see the film in the UK set to win £1 million. Which may well ensure at least £1 million in box office takings.

The Dublin Film Festival has advertised for a new programme director. The position is part-time on an initial one-year contract. Aine O'Halloran, who held the positions of festival manager and programmer this year, will continue as the festival director.

Six classic films are set for free screenings in this summer's season of Movies on the Square in Temple Bar's Meeting House Square. The season kicks off with two John Ford gems - The Quiet Man (on June 13th) and My Dar- ling Clementine (June 20th), followed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's exhilarating West Side Story (June 27th), Orson Welles's magnificent Citizen Kane (July 4th), John Huston's The African Queen (July 18th), and Sergei Eisenstein's great silent classic, Battleship Potemkin (July 25th) to be shown with the accompaniment of a live orchestra.

All screenings are on Saturday nights. Free tickets for each screening will be available from 9 a.m. on the Monday morning before the screening, at 18 Eustace Street - or by post by sending a s.a.e. to Tickets, 18 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, stating the title of the film for which tickets are required.

Anne Heche has landed the Janet Leigh role in Gus Van Sant's imminent frame-by-frame remake of Hitchock's Pyscho, with Julianne Moore as the concerned sister who meets a grisly end. William H. Macy will plays the detective on the case, and Norman Bates will be played by Vince Vaughn (from Swingers and The Lost World). The whole point of the exercise remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Ed Pressman, who is producing the film of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho (no relation), says he remains hopeful that Mary Harron will stay on board the project as writer-director now that Leonardo DiCaprio has been signed to play the leading role of a yuppie serial killer. Harron, who made I Shot Andy Warhol, wrote the screenplay with actress Guinevere Turner, and had planned the movie as a low-budget production starring Christian Bale. With Bale replaced by DiCaprio, the budget has soared to $40 million - of which $21 million goes to Leo - and Harron is reported to have stepped down as director.

The Irish actress Emer McCourt - whose notable screen credits include Hush-A-Bye Baby, Riff-Raff and Boston Kickout - turns producer with Human Traffic, which is set in Wales and now is in post-production for an autumn release. Its director, Justin Kerrigan, describes it as "a character-driven film, in the tradition of Woody Allen, Hal Hartley and Richard Linklater, which delves into the complex and often warped imaginations of contemporary youth culture". The cast includes John Simm (from Boston Kickout and the TV series, The Lakes), Andrew Lincoln (who memorably played Egg in This Life) and Irish actress Lorraine Pilkington.

Following the recent publication of the report, Film In Ireland: The Role Of The Arts Council, the Film Institute of Ireland (FII) is holding an open forum at the IFC in Dublin tomorrow morning at 10.30 a.m. "I hope we can talk about issues ranging across the spectrum of interests," says FII director Sheila Pratschke. "I believe that we will be able, as a sector, to interact more effectively with the Arts Council as a result of such discussion - as well as with all the other agencies and Government departments with whom we want to cultivate fruitful relationships."

A 12-film season dealing with the Weimar Republic, Divine Decadence, opens at the IFC on Sunday evening with Joe May's 1929 expressionist melodrama, Asphalt, which will have live musical accompaniment. The eclectic and attractive season promises Reinhold Schunzel's Viktor And Viktoria (later remade in Hollywood), G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box and The Threepenny Opera, Fritz Lang's M, Luchino Visconti's The Damned, Bob Fosse's Cabaret, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola and Istvan Szabo's Mephisto.