A WINTER’S TALEBe on the lookout in...

A WINTER’S TALE

Be on the lookout in 2001 for Al Pacino’s second feature directing stint, “Chinese Coffee.” Fox Searchlight has acquired the rights to the picture that Pacino financed and shot over a three-year period. The film, adapted from Ira Lewis’ play about a Greenwich Village writer and his mentor looking back on a winter’s night at the events that shaped their lives, pairs the director with “Law & Order’s” Jerry Orbach. Pacino’s first directing effort, “Looking for Richard,” a documentary on the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare, earned him a Directors Guild of America award.

LIFE AFTER TV

Two actresses who left successful television series, Sherry Stringfield and Jill Hennessy, turn up in supporting roles in Joan Chen’s “Autumn in New York,” released Friday. Stringfield left her role as Dr. Susan Lewis on “ER” at the height of its success in 1996. She has since appeared in a couple of made-for-TV movies, as well as the disco-era feature “54.” Hennessy, who prosecuted Jerry Orbach’s collars on “Law & Order,” also departed her prime-time gig in ’96 and has since appeared in independent features such as “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “Chutney Popcorn.” She was recently in the TNT television miniseries “Nuremberg” and will star as Jacqueline Kennedy this fall in NBC’s “Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot.”

SHORTS NOTICE

The Web site iFilm and AMC Theatres team up this week to present a trio of short films on the big screen. The screenings, to be held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at the AMC Century 14 in Century City, are part of the IFILM@AMC series, designed to allow short films the theatrical distribution necessary to be eligible for Academy Awards. The three films, shown at a reduced price, are “Preying Mantis,” an eerie thriller by Pep Bosch; Andy Berman and Jonathan Hyman’s “The Bit Players,” a backstage look at “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” told from the perspective of the Oompa Loompas and starring Verne Troyer (Mini-Me of “Austin Powers” fame); and Billy Bob Thornton in a wacky new-age western by Jeff Lester called “The Last Real Cowboys.”