Thanks to Dav­id Lind­say, WFS Pres­id­ent, for send­ing these notices through­out the year.

Poster Sale

How many times, when you have been to the Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al, have you wished you could have one of the posters that were on dis­play in the foy­ers – even some of those that were moun­ted on card. Well here’s your chance: Sat­urday Novem­ber 26 at the Para­mount from 10.00am to 1.00pm. There will a vari­ety of posters from over the years, includ­ing large 4 sheet ones and moun­ted posters. Any­thing spe­cial or rare will be indi­vidu­ally priced, oth­er­wise most posters will be at a stand­ard reas­onabe price.

A taste of what is on offer – The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and her Lov­er, Dreams (Kur­osawa), The Dead (Hus­ton), Liquid Sky, Once Upon A Time in Amer­ica, Vari­ous Rohmer films, Walk­about, Land of the Dead, a weird Czech ver­sion of Thor­oughly Mod­ern Mil­lie. Of the moun­ted ones: Big Night, Cel­lu­loid Closet, some Take­shi Kit­ano films, The King­dom, Music of Chance, Naked, Mil­ou in May, Zero Kelvin. Plus heaps more. Roll up and check it out. There will be fly­ers about the sale at our screen­ing on Monday night.

HanussenWe are now down to the last two films in our Ger­man sea­son made avail­able to the Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety by The Goethe-Insti­tut. The screen­ings are free to mem­bers, with the pub­lic admit­ted by way of dona­tion at the door – paper (or quiet) money please. If you haven’t already, make sure you pick up a copy of the Goethe Insti­tut pub­lic­a­tion on the pro­du­cer Artur Brau­ner which is avail­able free (while stock lasts).

Istvan Szabo is the dir­ect­or of HANUSSEN, which was nom­in­ated in the Best For­eign-Lan­guge Film cat­egory for both the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards in 1988. It screens on Monday 21 Novem­ber at 6.15pm. Togeth­er with Mephisto (1981) and Col­on­el Redl (1984) it is the third part of Sza­bo’s ‘war­time tri­logy’ – all star­ring Klaus Maria Brand­auer with cine­ma­to­graphy by Lajos Koltai. While recu­per­at­ing in a mil­it­ary hos­pit­al, Karl Schroeder comes under the influ­ence of a Jew­ish psy­cho­lo­gist who guides him through the subtle art of hyp­not­ism. He also learns how to mar­ket his bizarre gifts with a new name and image. Rein­ven­ted as suave turbaned mys­tic Erik Jan Hanussen he quickly moves into influ­en­tial circles and cap­tures the atten­tion of Hitler when he declares that the coun­try is on the threshold of a new era: of order, and the tri­umph of the will. But he makes a fatal mis­take when he pre­dicts the burn­ing of the Ger­man Reich­stag…

The final film in the sea­son on Monday 28 Novem­ber is THE ROSE GARDEN (1990), dir­ec­ted by Fons Rade­makers. Once again Brau­ner places his con­fid­ence in big-name stars such as Liv Ull­mann, Max­imili­an Schell and Peter Fonda. Schell, oth­er­wise an elo­quent act­or, con­vin­cingly makes the stam­mer­ing and speech­less­ness of a trau­mat­ised sur­viv­or a part of him­self. The cent­ral story, based on his­tor­ic­al fact, deals with the hanging of 20 Jew­ish chil­dren in a school in Ham­burg a few days before the end of the war. The former con­cen­tra­tion camp com­mand­er who was respons­ible was liv­ing unbothered by the author­it­ies when the film was being made. The film makes ques­tions about the admin­is­tra­tion of justice and what is justice and injustice its main theme.

That ends our offi­cial sea­son for the year – but don’t over­look our spe­cial screen­ing at the begin­ning of next month.

As part of the North­ern Wel­ling­ton Fest­iv­al, our silent-film pian­ist, Dav­id Beat­ie will be accom­pa­ny­ing BROKEN BLOSSOMS at the Khan­dal­lah Town Hall in Ganges Road on Sat­urday 3 Decem­ber at 8.00pm. Entry will be by way of donation/koha.

Next year is the 60th Anniversary of the found­ing of the Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety - and the film soci­ety move­ment in New Zea­l­and. We are con­sid­er­ing hav­ing some kind of func­tion to mark the occa­sion – per­haps in con­junc­tion with the AGM on 13 March.

The pro­gramme for next year is still in its early plan­ning stages and noth­ing is yet con­firmed. At the moment there is a pos­sib­il­ity of a short sea­son of Ant­o­nioni films in 35mm prints: L’Avven­tura, L’E­c­lisse and Red Desert are hoped to be included. Also in 35mm prints a short sea­son of God­ard: Breath­less, Pierre Le Fou, Every Man For Him­self and Con­tempt. There will also be some early Amer­ic­an clas­sics.

Our first screen­ing next year, depend­ing on print avail­ab­il­ity, will be on 6 March. The acclaimed silent-film accom­pan­ist, Dav­id James will be at Napi­er­’s Art Deco Week in mid-Feb­ru­ary play­ing his own com­mis­sioned score to Joe May’s ASPHALT (Ger­many 1929). He will be in Wel­ling­ton on 6 March and we are cur­rently await­ing con­firm­a­tion that the restored 35mm print will be avail­able for our Wel­ling­ton per­form­ance.

If you have any sug­ges­tions for films that you would like to see included in our 2006 sea­son, please send them to me at FilmSociety@gmail.com. I will pass them on the NZ Fed­er­a­tion of Film Soci­et­ies which nego­ti­ate for films for the whole coun­try – no guar­an­tees though that your sug­ges­tion will be taken up. It all depends on rights and avail­ab­il­ity – and almost every­one has dif­fer­ent ideas on what they would like to see. There are only a cer­tain num­ber of films we can pro­gramme in any one year!

We expect the bro­chure detail­ing our 2006 sea­son will be mailed out in Mid-Feb­ru­ary. But keep an eye on our web­site from early in the New Year. Titles will be added as they are con­firmed.

And keep sup­port­ing the Para­mount by attend­ing their reg­u­lar screen­ings. Next up:

On 24 Novem­ber, Costa Gav­ras’ THE AX [Le Couper­et] (France/Belgium/Spain 2005). Jose Gar­cia plays a man made redund­ant from a pos­i­tion at a paper mill. After two years search­ing for a job he hits on a plan to identi­fy and elim­in­ate his com­pet­it­ors. Black com­edy does­n’t come much black­er than this… From the Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al.