Bermuda Film Festival offering Dinner And A Movie is a fictional documentary about documentaries gone horribly wrong. It is also a film about making films.

Around and around it all goes.

This is a light hearted film that should appeal to 25 to 30 somethings who are "trying to make it''.

In this self-proclaimed "hippy chick flick'' directed, produced and written by Lisa Kors, a young film maker not unlike Lisa Kors, is struggling to be discovered.

Katie, who still lives at home with her parents, wants to make a "statement'' as an artist. Playing the Wee Merlady (for copy write reasons) at children's birthday parties just isn't cutting it.

"If you want to succeed in this business, lay off the Camille Paglia,'' one mother tells her.

Katie dreams of going to Russia to make a nine-part documentary about Alexander Solzhenistyn "who brought down communism without raising a hand''.

Solzhenistyn is the famed human rights activist and author of Gulag Archipelago .

A former birthday party client hires Katie to direct a cheesy PBS documentary about the dating scene in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (yawn). Unfortunately, the dating scene is "the pits''. To make matters worse, her parents smell money after years of supporting their struggling artist. They suddenly demand their student loan money back plus interest.

Katie: "That was a loan? I thought it was a gift.'' PBS wants Katie to follow around the chauvinistic and handsome Jed as he tries out every woman in the city. Jed is a honest kind of guy. He knows what he wants. (Sex and lots of it.) Unfortunately, the only woman in the entire town who doesn't find Jed horrendously dull is Katie herself. Meanwhile, Katie's friend Spider (who'd like to be a little more than friends) looks on with quiet envy.

"Why is it always my shoulder you come to cry on, when these things don't work out?'' he asks Katie.

To make matters worse, PBS is demanding a "happily ever after'' for Jed and they don't think Katie would bring up the ratings. They have their own ideas.

And Dinner & a Movie does have a happy ending, but it's not the happy ending PBS was expecting. Thank goodness, because Jed is just a little too two dimensional to stomach.

The character of Katie is well developed, probably because Lisa Kors knows this type very well. However, Spider and Jed need more fleshing out. Besides, Katie, what are their interests? What is their background? The idea that Jed could fake his way into Katie's heart based on a few drunken words by Spider was not believable.

The acting from Marianne Hagan and PBS executive Arlene (Anita Gillete) was impressive. They're the sort of actors who make you think, "I've seen these people before'', but you can't quite place them.

The nice thing about independent films is that you don't have to suffer through yet another deja vu-inducing Richard Geer/Julia Roberts film. When you haven't seen the actors in a hundred other films, it makes the characters more believable.

Lisa Kors, an award winning filmmaker, has been described as "Woody Allen on oestrogen''. Dinner & a Movie is one of her first forays into feature films.

She is a graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island. She went on to receive an MFA in film production from the University of Southern California where she was awarded the film school's top screen writing honour.

Ms Kors has produced a number of shorts which have played in over 50 international film festivals and received numerous awards for both Shayna Maidels: Orthodox Jewish Girls and Godmothers . Lisa continues to produce and direct on location behind the scenes specials for Paramount, Universal and Disney.

Dinner And A Movie is showing tonight at the Little Theatre at 9 p.m.

By Jessie Moniz