ACCORDING to a survey compiled by video distributors, Irish viewers rent more videos per household than any other European country. The survey shows that 35 per cent of Irish VCRowners regularly rent videos, compared with 18 per cent in the UK, and that the combined video rental and sell through market in Ireland grew by about four per cent last year to a total of £58 million. Whereas sell through exceeds video rental revenue in most European countries, and sell through revenue in Ireland increased by 12 per cent last year, rentals accounted for £40 million of last year's video revenue in Ireland and sell through for just £18 million.
THE annual National Viewing sessions of the Federation of Irish Film Societies (FIFS) will be held in White's Hotel, Wexford from March 29th to 31st. A round the clock programme of feature films will be shown over the course of the weekend as delegates select titles for their next seasons. Anyone interested in forming a film society in their area should contact FIFS for further information on (01) 679 4420.
LIMERICK's second Irish Film Festival will take place from April 19th to 21st at the Belltable Arts Centre and the Savoy cinema, offering what the organisers describe as a great opportunity for filmgoers to see the successes (and failures) of the current upsurge in film making in the country". The event will include a retrospective of Cathal Black's films - Our Boys, Pigs and Korea - along with a forum on independent documentary production and a seminar on music video.
Screenings of Guiltrip, Circle Of Friends, The Secret Of Roan Inish and Frankie Starlight will be included in the 28 film programme. However, the organisers' claim that the schedule will include Stephen Frears's film of Roddy Doyle's The Van was rejected by that film's production company.
HAVING taken two prizes at both the Bombay and Angers film festivals, Damien O Donnell's short film Thirty Five Aside has swept the hoard at the prestigious Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival in France. One of the two Irish entries among the 70 short films in competition, O'Donnell's film received the festival's Grand Prix - with a prize of 20,000FF and free sub titling of the film into another European language - along with the audience prize, Le Prix du Public and Le Prix Canal+, which includes the sale of the broadcasting rights to Canal+.
ILLNESS prevented, the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima from travelling to Belfast on Wednesday for the first centenary of cinema lecture at Queen's film Theatre. Oshima is preparing to shoot his next film, Gohatto, a period drama dealing with a homosexual love triangle involving swordsmen.
ROBIN WILLIAMS and Billy Crystal have been signed to star in the Warner Bros remake of the hit French film, Les Comperes, which will be produced by Joel Silver and directed by Ivan Reitman. Robin Williams recently starred with Nathan Lane and Dianne Wiest in The Birdcage, Mike Nichols's US remake of another French hit, La Cage Aux Folles, which is due to open here on April 26th.
The next US TV series to be given the big screen treatment will be the 1960s sitcom, My Favourite Martian. Joe Dante will direct the remake and Martin Short, who was in Dante's Innerspace, is likely to play the title role originally played by Ray Walston.
THE director of Boyz N The Hood, John Singleton, lightens up with his fourth film, New Jersey Turnpikes, a spoof basketball documentary in the style of This Is Spinal Tap. It is set in the 1970s and deals with the worst team in the league. Singleton's second and third films, Poetic Justice and Higher Learning, have gone directly to video in Ireland.
HAVING made his film debut with the short film, Change, last year, Ger Philpott has completed directing Xanax, a Telefis na Gaeilge commission which was shot over two weeks in Dingle, Cork and Dublin. Produced by Hilary McLoughlin, Xanax is a drama in which a manic depressive woman travels to Dublin by train to meet an unknown man. The cast features Joan Sheehy, Catriona Ni Mhurchu, Denis Conway and Tim Murphy.
MARTIN BALSAM, the accomplished American character actor who was found dead in a Rome hotel on Tuesday, won a best supporting actor Oscar for A Thousand Clowns in 1965, but he is more likely to be remembered by general audiences for his role as the ill fated detective in Psycho. Balsam, who was 76, made his screen debut in On The Waterfront in 1954 and went on to feature in scores of movies, including 12 Angry Men, Breakfast At Tiffany's, The Anderson Tapes, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, All The President's Men and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear.
