Fine figures in cinemas

The first six months of this year have seen cinema admissions in the Republic increase by 31 per cent on the equivalent period in 1999, thanks to a clutch of hit titles which attracted audiences across a wide demographic span. In February, for example, the huge box-office for Toy Story 2 contributed to a 64 per cent rise on the previous year, with 1,657,553 admissions. The figures for May were almost as impressive, with a 47.6 per cent increase, thanks in no small part to the impact of Gladiator. Other big hits over this period included Angela's Ashes, The Beach and The Talented Mr Ripley. In contrast, June saw a 4.3 per cent fall from the previous year, due to the impact of Euro 2000 and some good weather (but also to the fact that distributors seemed to save up all their most unwatchable dreck for this period).

Twenty films from around the world will be in competition for the top prize, the Golden Lion, at this year's Venice Film Festival, which opens on August 30th. Only two Americans make the list, the veteran Robert Altman with Dr T and the Women and painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel with Before Night Falls. Other familiar names in contention are Barbet Scroeder (La vierge des tueurs), Raoul Ruiz (Fils de deux meres ou comedie de l'innocence) and Stephen Frears (currently wowing audiences here with his version of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity) for the Jimmy McGovern-penned Liam, which he recently told The Irish Times "was unlikely to get a cinema distribution, except in some Catholic countries". The festival jury will be chaired by Milos Forman, and includes director Claude Chabrol and actor Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Keep an eye out next week for The Tale of the Rat That Wrote, Billy O'Brien's Bafta-nominated fantasy short film, which is showing in the Debut series on Network 2 next Wednesday. Following its Bafta nomination (a rare occurrence for an Irish short), the film has gone on to win awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Toronto World-Wide Short Film Festival. The latter award automatically qualifies O'Brien for consideration for an Academy Award nomination. Given the subject matter and title, perhaps the distributors of the similarly-themed Rat might consider running The Tale of the Rat That Wrote with their feature when they release it this autumn.

With many predicting that the future of independent film-making is on the Web, the First Annual Directors Board for Excellence in Online Motion Picture Production - "The Pixie Awards" - were announced at a ceremony in the Hollywood Roosevelt Blossom Ballroom - the venue which hosted the very first Oscars. The winning films, with titles such as George Lucas in Love, may not ring much of a bell with average movie-goers, but the organisers proudly proclaimed the event a "stunning success, a history-making endeavour that truly heralds the Hollywood arrival of broadband and digital technology and the artists who use this technology to create the beginnings of a new feature".

The director Claude Sautet, who died recently in Paris at the age of 76, was an adept and subtle chronicler of the fears and foibles of the French bourgeoisie in films such as Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud and Un Coeur en Hiver. A few years older than such nouvelle vague luminaries as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, Sautet had little interest in their desire to upturn the conventions of classical French cinema. As a result, for much of his career he struggled to make a definite impression on French and international audiences. One exception was his 1970 film, Les Choses de la Vie, an eternal-triangle love story told in flashback from a fatal car crash (remade 24 years later in the US as Intersection). But it was only when he was in his 60s that he scored his first major international hit, Un Couer en Hiver, which drew on his own considerable knowledge of music to tell the story of the relationship between a cellist (Emmanuelle Beart) and an emotionally repressed instrument-maker (Daniel Auteuil). He followed with another collaboration on a similar theme with Beart, Nelly et Mr Arnaud, in which she played a secretary transcribing the memoirs of an apparently temperamental older man (Michel Serrault). Both films combined a melancholic view of the difficulty of human communication with an undercurrent of dry humour, and both were made with exquisite craftsmanship and restraint.