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.