Here comes the autumn film festival

The New Zealand International Film Festival
Auckland from July 18 – August 4
Wellington from July 26 – August 11

The New Zealand International Film Festival will present a series of Autumn Events this April and May, including new digital restorations of Lawrence of Arabia, Guys and Dolls, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou.

NZ premiere screenings of Oscar-nominated Kon-Tiki and a selection of striking new documentaries and features will round out the events in Auckland and Wellington.

The Autumn Events will take place at The Civic and the newly refurbished Academy Cinemas and Rialto Cinemas in Auckland in late April and May.

In Wellington, there are plans to host Guys and Dolls and Lawrence of Arabia at the Embassy Theatre from April 20. Further autumn screenings will take place at the Paramount, Wellington.

“Two spectacular classics will launch our Autumn Event calendar on April 20: Lawrence of Arabia, in a new 50th anniversary 4K digital restoration acclaimed at Cannes last year; and Guys and Dolls, which sees the unfailingly charismatic Marlon Brando croon it up alongside Frank Sinatra,” NZIFF director Bill Gosden says.

“NZIFF’s curatorial eye never rests. We never stop hearing about or seeing films that deserve a theatrical platform out of the annual midwinter programme. The opportunity to present some spectacular digital restorations on the giant Civic screen and at the Wellington Embassy was especially irresistible.”

The Autumn Events will be held at a time of year that previously would have seen NZIFF’s World Cinema Showcase screenings in the four main centres.

“We saw that the original purpose of the Showcase was becoming harder to articulate to an audience confronted by a proliferation of smaller, more clearly defined festivals," Mr Gosden says.

"The NZIFF in July is our flagship event. Rather than continue with a second festival, our newly styled Autumn Events seem a more easily understood and seamless extension to the winter extravaganza.” 

Christchurch and Dunedin venues, which formerly hosted the Showcase, are not equipped to screen key Autumn Event films for 2013, but NZIFF is keen to retain an off-season presence in both cities in the future.

“We hope the Regent Dunedin will be funded to equip with DCP technology in time for the NZIFF in August. In Christchurch, we hope negotiations will open the way for NZIFF to use the current venue’s DCP equipment for the festival in August.”

New feature films from Iceland, Norway, France and Canada provide an enticing taste of NZIFF fare ahead of our annual celebration of the world’s latest and best. 

The Deep
Dir Baltasar Kormákur, 93mins, 2012, Icelandic
The improbable true story of a ship-wrecked fisherman who swam for six hours in the stormy, icy (5-6° C) Atlantic ocean offers a powerful, elemental depiction of an incident that still baffles many commentators.

After May
(aka Something in the Air)
Dir Olivier Assayas, 122mins, 2012, France
After May (aka Something in the Air) is filmmaker Olivier Assayas’s (Summer Hours, Carlos) lyrical and reflective memoir of his own youthful wavering in the aftermath of the student-led protests that convulsed France in May 1968.

Antiviral
Dir Brandon Cronenberg, 112mins, 2012, Canada
The feature debut of writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, is a clammily forensic foray into satirically loaded body horror, a chilly projection into a near-future metropolis where the viral infections of the stars are copyright-protected and sold to fans. Celebrity cold sores, anyone?  

From Up on Poppy Hill – English language version
Dir Goro Miyazaki, 91mins, 2011, Japan
The latest classic from Studio Ghibli is the tender story of two enterprising children, schoolgirl Umi and her dashing friend Shun. English-language version of NZIFF 2012 film.

Caution: Artists at Work
The surprising strategies of two masters of photographic realism are revealed in these candid, closely observed accounts of their working practices. Gregory Crewdson creates photographs that look like movie stills: monumental dioramas of human desolation in ominous urban landscapes. Movie maker Viktor Kossakovsky’s glorious images find mordant humour in human eccentricity and sheer joy in nature’s splendour. Their dispositions could hardly be less alike, but their tactics – let’s say their visionary determinations of what’s real – are tellingly similar.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
Dir Ben Shapiro, 77mins, 2012, USA
“An acclaimed photographer with the eye of a filmmaker, Gregory Crewdson has created some of the most gorgeously haunting pictures in the history of the medium. His meticulously composed, large-scale images are stunning narratives of small-town American life – moviescapes crystallised into a single frame.” – Zeitgeist Films

Where the Condors Fly
Dir Carlos Klein, 89mins, 2012, Switzerland
A “making of” that soars over the wasteland of promotional puffery and DVD extras, this candid, funny picture of Russian documentary maven Viktor Kossakovsky at work on his feel-good epic ¡Vivan las Antipodas! packs enough revelation, provocation and debate to constitute a masterclass. 

NZIFF heart documentaries
NZIFF has been a champion of documentaries on New Zealand screens for as long as anyone can remember. Last year’s programme screened 60! Built on the principle of sharing box office income with filmmakers, the festival provides one of the few opportunities around for filmmakers to launch their works locally and earn a few dollars in the process.

Which means we’re spoiled for choice – and this winter’s selection is already looking fabulous. Catch up first with three of the most striking (and awarded) documentaries of 2012 which, for various reasons, eluded the programmers last winter.

The Queen of Versailles
Dir Lauren Greenfield, 104mins, 2012, USA
“A succulently entertaining movie that invites you to splash around in the dreams and follies of folks so rich they're the one percent of the one percent.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

The House I Live In
Dir Eugene Jarecki, 105mins, 2012, USA
Grand Jury Prize winner for the Best US Documentary at Sundance last year, Eugene Jarecki’s The House I Live In is a cogent, condensed study of the ‘war on drugs’ and its insidious role in the socio-economic break down of America.

The World Before Her
Dir Nisha Pahuja, 90mins, 2012, Canada
“In Nisha Pahuja’s brilliant study of women’s choices in modern India, two vastly different movements claim to promote female empowerment. One is the Miss India pageant, the other the women’s branch of militant fundamentalist Hinduism.” – Susan G. Cole, Now Magazine

NZIFF Autumn Events key information
The Autumn Events will take place at The Civic, the newly refurbished Academy Cinemas and Rialto Cinemas in Auckland from April 20. In Wellington NZIFF is planning to host Guys and Dolls and Lawrence of Arabia at the Embassy Theatre from April 20. All other Autumn screenings will take place at the Paramount, Wellington.

The calendar of NZIFF Autumn Events is now online and tickets are on sale directly from the cinema venues particular to each film screening. Tickets for Civic screenings are sold through The Edge ticketing agencies. A free printed calendar will be available in Auckland and Wellington from the end of March.

The main festival, NZIFF, will screen in Auckland from July 18 – August 4 and in Wellington from July 26 – August 11. Full programme updates will be made in late June.

For festival updates, visit www.nzff.co.nz and register to receive e-newsletters.