Emigrant tales in first official tongue

COLM Meaney has been dusting off his cupla focal for Kings, a bilingual but mainly Irish-language feature that began shooting in Belfast this week.

He joins Donal O'Kelly, Brendan Conroy, Donncha Crowley, Barry Barnes and Sean O'Tarpaigh for a story of Irishmen who emigrated to England in the 1970s and are reunited for the funeral of a friend. The director, Tom Collins, who made Bogwoman and Dead Long Enough, adapted his screenplay from Jimmy Murphy's play, The Kings of the Kilburn High Road.

Meanwhile, over the border in Cavan, director Graham Cantwell is shooting his first feature, Anton, which also uses locations in Dublin and Paris. Writer-producer Anthony Fox takes the title role of a Cavan native returning home after five years in the navy and drawn into subversive activities. The cast includes Gerard McSorley, Olga Wherly and Vincent Fagan.

Accessible cinema

Film societies all over Ireland are starting their autumn/winter seasons, offering a remarkable range of world cinema not easily accessible beyond the arthouses in Dublin and Cork. Between now and the end of December, the member groups of Access Cinema will show 114 different films on 35mm or DVD in 372 screenings at 43 venues criss-crossing the country, from the Abbey Centre in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal to the Old Market House Arts Centre in Dungarvan, Co Waterford.

Heavily booked titles on the current circuit are the powerful Holocaust drama Fateless; the sharp US serious comedy Junebug; Argentinian road movie Familia Rodante; and the documentaries Grizzly Man and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Zoom, Access Cinema's initiative aimed at 15 year-olds and over, returns with a strong, varied programme featuring Brick, Tsotsi, L'Enfant, Offside and the restored 1961 film, The Innocents. See www.accesscinema.ie

Sex shooter

Now one of the most in-demand cinematographers in the film industry, Armagh native Seamus McGarvey, whose credits include High Fidelity, Enigma and The Hours, is the director of photography on two movies screening this weekend. One, World Trade Center, is on general release. The other is one of seven short films in Destricted, a sexually graphic compilation showing in the Stranger Than Fiction festival at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin tomorrow evening. McGarvey shot the segment directed by British artist Sam Taylor-Wood who, the programme note states, "took her lone participant to Death Valley and filmed him from a distance of some 500 feet, lending a literal isolation to his solo sexual act."

Cohen packs 'em in

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, last night's opening presentation in Stranger Than Fiction, sold out within hours and a second screening has been added for 10.30am tomorrow, with director Lian Lunson in attendance. Following tomorrow's 9pm screening of Air Guitar Nation, the audience will be invited to a nearby tavern for an Airaoke, which, I'm told, is "Karaoke for air guitar enthusiasts".

Films for Ranelagh fest

The Cinemobile rolls into the leafy Dublin suburbs tomorrow for a packed programme of films at the Ranelagh Arts Festival. The entertainment starts on a high note with the classic musical Singin' in the Rain, and continues with Pixar's animated Cars; François Truffaut's superb The 400 Blows; and the restored 1926 silent film Irish Destiny. It also includes MiniCineFest, a selection of new Irish shorts. A panel of local cineastes, including Redmond Morris, Jane Doolan and myself, will adjudicate on the entries. www.ranelagharts.org

Bucket on standby

Is vomiting the new black, so to speak? Having seen at least a dozen movies at the Toronto festival this month in which people threw up, mostly for no credible reason, I went to World Trade Center, and there was Maggie Gyllenhaal unleashing the contents of her stomach. Clearly, the timing is perfect for Martin Creed's Sick Film, which has its world premiere at the plush London Mayfair cinema on October 13th and features various people vomiting.

According to the press release, "Creed transforms this violent and repulsive physical act into an elegiac performance". Creed puts it another way: "I am trying to get from the inside out."

mdwyer@irish-times.ie