Film masters set for fleadh

Michael Dwyeron film

Oscar winner Jeremy Irons will give the acting masterclass at next month's Galway Film Fleadh, where he will also participate in a public interview. Volker Schlöndorff, who directed Irons in the 1984 Proust adaptation Swann in Love and whose many other films include The Tin Drum and the recent Ulzhan, will give the directing masterclass. Terry George, the writer-director of Hotel Rwanda, will present the screening masterclass at the fleadh, which runs from July 10th to 15th. www.galwayfilmfleadh.com

A final hit for late actress

The sleeper hit of the year to date in the US has been Waitress, which has taken more than $12 million on limited release over the past six weeks. It was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who was 40 when she was murdered in Manhattan last November. Formerly best known for her acting roles in US indies, Shelly made a striking film debut in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and featured in, among others, Trust, Sleep with Me and Factotum. She makes her final screen appearance in Waitress, as a friend and colleague of the title character (played by Keri Russell) at a small-town diner. The film opens here in August.

Leading light of African film dies

Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, who died last weekend at the age of 84, was the father of post-colonial African cinema. He came relatively late to movies.

A war veteran who joined the French forces and an active trade unionist, Sembene worked at the Citroën factory in Paris and on the docks of Marseilles before writing several acclaimed novels and studying film in Moscow. He was in his early 40s by the time he directed his first feature , the sharp colonial satire, Black Girl/La Noire de . . . (1966).

In the manner of Ken Loach, Sembene was a polemicist who made his political points directly but accessibly through skilfully structured narratives that arrested the attention and with classical cinematic style in such notable films as Xala, Ceddo and Camp de Thiaroye. At 82, Sembene demonstrated that he had lost none of his edge in his final film, Moolaadé, a tough, powerful drama in which he unflinchingly tackled the practice of female genital mutilation in present-day west Africa.

Parker to pass judgment

Alan Parker will serve as an adjudicator for the short film competition at the inaugural Kerry International Film Festival, which runs from September 6th to 9th. His many credits as a director include Midnight Express, Angel Heart, Mississippi Burning, Evita and two films made in Ireland, The Commitments and Angela's Ashes. A special event at the festival will be a screening of David Lean's epic Ryan's Daughter, which was shot in west Kerry, after which local people will share their memories of working on the film. www.kerryiff.com

Jackson filming again

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has cast Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz (right) in The Lovely Bones, his first film since King Kong. Based on the best-selling novel by Alice Sebold, the film stars Weisz as the mother of a young girl who is abducted and murdered. Shooting gets under way in October in Pennsylvania and New Zealand.

Martin still in the pink

Although the remake of The Pink Panther starring Steve Martin as bumbling Inspector Clouseau opened to generally negative reviews last year, it made enough money to trigger a sequel, which starts shooting in August. Martin returns as Inspector Clouseau, and Harald Zwart, the Dutch director of Agent Cody Banks and One Night at McCool's, takes over from Shawn Levy at the helm.

Pacino: good money follows bad scripts

Quote of the week, from Al Pacino, now on our screens in Ocean's Thirteen:

"I can almost state this is a fact. The worse the script is, the more money you're offered. Show me a bad script, and I will show you a big payday. Conversely, show me a really great script and forget it. You're lucky if you don't have to pay for it."