evening with Michael Douglas' inaugural effort as a producer, One Night at McCool's and an opening gala at Fort Hamilton.

But more than a few people may find themselves crossing Hamilton to catch the film competing with that big name Hollywood effort -- Disco Pigs.

Disco Pigs is one of four features and four shorts being screened as a special sidebar series to the festival highlighting Irish film.

The film -- made by Kirsten Sheridan, daughter of Jim Sheridan the acclaimed director of My Left Foot and The Field -- premiered to a standing ovation at the Berlin film festival and will be moving on to Cannes in May.

This opening night juxtaposition of films, is exactly the kind of battle that non-American English language films face constantly according to Rod Stoneman, the chief executive of the Irish Film Board.

"Ninety-six percent of the films screened in Ireland are American,'' he said.

"But only two percent of films in US cinemas are non-American. This is not a happy situation from any point of view.'' Mr. Stoneman is on Island for the festival and will introduce the eight Irish films which comprise BIFF's first Island Sidebar.

In addition, he will sit on panels this Saturday discussing film financing and marketing and distribution of independent films.

Mr. Stoneman said that Irish film making has undergone an explosion in the last seven years. "In the past many of the films made about Ireland were made by people outside Ireland on their perceptions of Ireland rather than by the Irish themselves,'' he told the Hamilton Lions' Club during their weekly luncheon yesterday.

And the four Irish features which will be shown over the next six days clearly reflect the new diversity of its film industry.

Disco Pigs, is a film "hot out of the laboratory development bath'' according to Mr. Stoneman.

Meanwhile, the other three features -- I Could Read the Sky, Nora and Country -- are stories told and shot in widely different ways.

Nora tells the story of the spirited young woman who ran off with Irish literary genius James Joyce. I Could Read the Sky weaves an Irish tale with powerful historical undercurrents -- of a labourer who travels abroad to work.

But, Mr. Stoneman says, it tells the story in a multi-image, multi-sound way using the language of MTV.

The final feature, Country, is a rural-based story of a misguided sexual advance that leads to an explosion of violence according to the BIFF programme.

Local audiences may judge the veracity of that statement for themselves over the next six days as the Irish sidebar -- and dozens of 40 odd other films from around the world -- grace local screens.