Suffused with a sense of the South not often seen on film but owing as much to Kids as Huck Finn, Ira Sachs' The Delta starts off in an anomic adolescent subculture before heading down the Mississippi towards a destination neither of the film's two protagonists are prepared to reach.

Seventeen-year-old Lincoln Bloom has a girlfriend but he suspects he might be more interested in men. His quest to discover his true self collides numerous, disparate communities - large Jewish families, suburban teens, Vietnamese immigrants and small-town gay life.

Sachs spent his first 18 years in Memphis before leaving for Yale and has spent the last decade in New York working in theater and film, including stints reading scripts for Martin Scorsese and as an assistant to both Eric Bogosian and Norman Rene. His 1994 half-hour short, Lady, a Warholesque meditation on sexual ambiguity, premiered at Sundance and screened extensively on the festival circuit. Sachs and producer Margot Bridger raised the "somewhat under half-a-million" necessary to shoot the 16mm Delta through a limited partnership and headed south last spring for sixmonths' immersion in the Memphis youth scene to soak up local ambience, cast, rehearse and scout locations.

"We were looking for kids who could instantly create characters and stay with them, naturals who wouldn't be self conscious in front of the camera," says Sachs, who trolled clubs, rave parties and pool halls to find non-actors with the goods. He also looked for original regional music - local rave, punk and old rhythm and blues bands - he could get cheap for Delta's soundtrack. All other costs had to be contained to allow for the high shooting ratio Sachs says had to be his number one priority. Sachs expects to have a finished film in May; all rights are available.

Cast: Shayne Gray, Thang Chan, Rachel Zan Huss, Nhan Van Dong, Colonius Davis. Crew: Producer, Margot Bridger; Screenwriter/Director, Ira Sachs; Director of Photography, Ben Speth; Production Designer, Bernhard Blythe; Editor, Affonso Goncalves. Contact: Margot Bridger, Charlie Guidance Productions, 225 Lafayette Street, #602, New York, NY 10012. Tel: (212) 431-0147, Fax: (212) 431-5135.

The Broken Giant - Estep Nagy
The Delta - Ira Sachs
Fame Whore - Jon Moritsuga
Girlfriends - Marlies Carruth
Lewis & Clark & George - Rod Mccall
Loose Women - Paul Bernard
Occasional Hell - Salome Breziner
Rudy Blue - John Werner
Sam - Richie Vetter
Shooting Lilly - Arthur Borman