The hot new Dublin-born, New-York-based director Jimmy Smallhorn, Desert Hearts and ER director Donna Deitch, and zany NY comedienne Reno will all be on hand to introduce their films at the 6th Dublin Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which runs at the IFC in Dubin from July 30th to August 3rd.

The festival will be launched by Jim Sheridan and the impressive line up this year includes a tasty selection of World and Foreign Language films, like the Taiwanese film The River, and The Man In Her Life, described as “the campest treat to emerge from the Philippines since Ruby Wax rummaged through Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection”.

While continuing to cater for its core gay audience with the best of international gay cinema (like, for example Coming Out , the first gay film to emerge from East Germany, British director Paul Ormeland’s gay love story Like It Is, and the screen version of Terence McNally’s award-winning play Love, Valour And Compassion), the festival is also designed to be accessible and inclusive. Many of the films explore themes which are of interest to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Donna Deitch will probably go down in cinema history as the director of the first mainstream lesbian love story, Desert Hearts, but her new film Angel On My Shoulder is an intimate portrait of the actress Gwen Welles, who

died of cancer, aged 42. After she was diagnosed with the disease in 1992 Welles asked her friend Deitch to film the progress of her illness. the result, according to reports, is moving, difficult but strangely hopeful.

Similarly Jimmy Smallhorne’s 2by4, while it does deal with homosexuality among the Irish emigrant community in New York, is primarily about immigrant struggles and identity.

Reno Finds Her Mom, which centres on the comedienne’s six-month search for her birth mother, features cameos from Lily Tomlin and Mary Tyler-Moore. Incidentally, Reno, once described as “Bette Midler on acid”, will be giving a live performance of her current

comedy show as part of the festival.

Booking and further information on the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is available from the IFC on (01) 679 3477 or the Festival Office on (01)672 7211.