Lughnasa dances on to the screen

The spellbinding, beautifully crafted and superbly acted film version of Brian Friel's Tony-award-winning play, Dancing At Lughnasa, has been selected to compete at next month's Venice Film Festival. Sensitively directed by Pat O'Connor and judiciously adapted by Frank McGuinness, the film features an exemplary cast led by Meryl Streep, Kathy Burke, Sophie Thompson, Brid Brennan, Catherine McCormack, Rhys Ifans and Michael Gambon.

It will have its world premiere at the highly selective Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on September 4th, followed by its Venice screening on the 10th and a gala screening at the Toronto festival on the 12th. The movie will have its Irish premiere - which is already sold out - on September 23rd and it goes on release here two days later.

Sony Picture Classics, who have the US rights to the film, see it as a formidable Oscars candidate for next year and they will begin a carefully staggered American release on November 13th. The movie opens in Britain on December 4th.

The next project for the film's producer, Noel Pearson, will be a documentary on the late Irish singer, Luke Kelly, which will be directed by Sinead O'Brien. Shooting starts in September.

The directors James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Rob Reiner are all set to play themselves in the new Albert Brooks movie, The Muse, which will also feature Sharon Stone, Jeff Bridges and Andie McDowell. Brooks, who has written and will direct the movie, will play the central role of a down-and-out screenwriter in Los Angeles.

The Pretty Woman team of Richard Gere, Julia Roberts and director Garry Marshall are teaming up again for the romantic comedy Runaway Bride, in which Gere plays a reporter assigned to write an article about a woman who has left a string of fiances standing at the altar.

Vincent D'Onofrio will play the Sixties radical Abbie Hoffman, who helped organise the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, in the biopic, Abbie!, which will feature Janeane Garofalo as Hoffman's ex-wife, Anita, and Kevin Corrigan as his fellow Yippie, Jerry Rubin.

Steven Spielberg's regular lighting cameraman, Janus Kaminski, who received an Oscar for his work on Schindler's List, is to make his directing debut with Lost Souls, a psychological thriller which is likely to star Winona Ryder. Meanwhile, the celebrity photographer, David Bailey, is set to make his feature directing debut with the thriller, The Intruder, which starts shooting in November. And screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, who wrote The Full Monty, is turning director with The Darkest Light, the story of a young girl's search for a miracle to save her brother's life. It will feature Kerry Fox and Stephen Dillane, both of whom were in Welcome To Sarajevo.

Literary adaptations on the way include: Mike Barker's film of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, which is likely to star the Irish actor, Stuart Townsend, with Rhys Ifans; Sara Sugarman's film of Kathy Lette's book, Mad Cows, which will feature Anna Friel, Joanna Lumley and Greg Wise; and Garrison Keillor's Woebegon Boy, which Michael Winterbottom will direct next year from a screenplay by Keillor himself.

The most expensive production ever mounted in China, Chen Kaige's Ch'in is now in the final stages of post-production with a view to an autumn release. Dealing with the rise of China's first emperor, Ying Zheng, the film features Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi and Liuejian.