Preview: 2013 New Zealand International Film Festival

Now, I’m risk­ing the ire of the extreme­ly help­ful and gen­er­ous New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val team here, but I’m going to rec­om­mend an approach to fes­ti­val-going that will prob­a­bly reward you more than it will them. Here goes: don’t book for any­thing. Don’t plan your life around any par­tic­u­lar screen­ing of any par­tic­u­lar film. Espe­cial­ly, don’t book for any­thing because that’s the one all your mates are going to.

Try this instead. Wake up on any giv­en morn­ing dur­ing the fes­ti­val, feel like watch­ing a movie, have a look through the fes­ti­val cal­en­dar in the mid­dle of the pro­gramme (or the handy-sized mini-guide, avail­able soon) and pick a some­thing you fan­cy based on the title. Or the cin­e­ma clos­est to you. Or the cin­e­ma fur­thest away. Or close your eyes and jab a fin­ger at the page. Either way, step out of your com­fort zone and try some­thing new. You won’t regret it. Well, you might, but prob­a­bly not for long.

Every year, this is kind of what I do when I ask the fes­ti­val pub­lic­i­ty team for help with this pre­view. Give me a stack of screen­er DVDs, I say, or those new-fan­gled inter­net links where I have to watch a film sit­ting at my desk. No, don’t tell me what they are. Let me guess. Some of my favourite fes­ti­val expe­ri­ences have come watch­ing films I knew noth­ing about, but for those of you who are going to ignore my advice and, um, take my advice, here are some notes on the films I’ve already seen, in no par­tic­u­lar order.

I’m a radio-head from my child­hood. I love radio, lis­ten­ing to it, appear­ing on it, mak­ing it. I love look­ing at stu­dios, perv­ing at micro­phones, the red lights that go on when the mics are live, the silent­ly tick­ing clocks. Watch­ing Nico­las Philib­ert’s The House of Radio, I was a pig in shit. I don’t think I’ve been as blissed out as this watch­ing a film for ages. It’s one day in the life of Radio France, where seem­ing­ly dozens of sta­tions share a giant Parisian cathe­dral ded­i­cat­ed to the wire­less. News, talk, cul­ture, music — clas­si­cal, jazz and hip-hop. Philib­ert’s polite cam­era peers into their stu­dios and their offices, even the Tour de France cor­re­spon­dent report­ing live from the back of a motor­bike.

Andrew Bujal­ski’s Com­put­er Chess starts out like a one joke mock­u­men­tary about a geek-meet­ing in the ear­ly 80s, where pro­gram­mers face off against each oth­er in an aspie bat­tle for chess suprema­cy. Shot in authen­tic grainy black and white video, Bujal­s­ki takes his film in some sur­pris­ing and mys­ti­cal direc­tions, end­ing on a note of uni­ver­sal won­der at, I don’t know, things.

Behind the Can­de­labra is direct­ed by Steven Soder­bergh (pho­tographed and edit­ed by him too under his cus­tom­ary alias­es Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard) from a script by Richard La Gra­vanese about the preda­to­ry and manip­u­la­tive roman­tic prac­tices of the clos­et­ed enter­tain­er Lib­er­ace. Bril­liant Matt Damon plays the spurned lover Scott Thor­son and Michael Dou­glas is the dia­mond and fur-clad pianist. Every­thing that Soder­bergh does here ele­vates a fair­ly run-of-the-mill screen­play, and the results are nev­er less than enter­tain­ing. Look out for screen leg­end Deb­bie Reynolds and note that this film was the late Mar­vin Ham­lis­ch’s final screen cred­it.

In Oh Boy, Tom Schilling’s Berlin stu­dent drop-out Niko Fis­ch­er mooches around the city try­ing to find a cup of cof­fee, thwart­ed by friends, fam­i­ly and strangers across one long hot day. There’s some­thing about black and white that makes this sort of thing seem like it has more going on than it has — heirs and graces. Sim­i­lar­ly, I enjoyed Frances Ha, and I did­n’t mind this, but I do won­der how much notice we would take if they weren’t shot to look like Man­hat­tan.

High School in Kaza­khstan is no walk in the park if Har­mo­ny Lessons is any­thing to go by. The bul­lies that tor­ment sen­si­tive young Aslan (Timur Aidar­bekov), learn their trade from the adults as we dis­cov­er once the cops get involved. First time writer-direc­tor Emir Baigazin is stronger at the lat­ter than the for­mer — there are plen­ty of “woah” images and his com­po­si­tions are always splen­did but the script is a bit obvi­ous. NB: Also fea­tures some star­tling­ly authen­tic vio­lence.

Star­let has plen­ty of its own brand of authen­tic­i­ty — the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley adult film indus­try pro­vides a back­ground to a rather sweet sto­ry of a young porno actress (Dree Hem­ing­way) who befriends an elder­ly woman (only-time actress and for­mer pro­fes­sion­al astrologer Besed­ka John­son). There’s some­thing beguil­ing about dis­cov­er­ing nuggets of gen­eros­i­ty in the unlike­li­est of places and few films these days are found­ed on char­ac­ters try­ing to be nice to each oth­er. Win­ning is how I’d describe it.

Also win­ning, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, is The Rock­et, an Aus­tralian film set in Laos. An inde­fati­ga­ble young boy, Sit­tiphon Dis­amoe, believes him­self to be cursed with rot­ten luck and, through most of the film, fate proves him right. He nev­er gives up, though, and Kim Mor­daun­t’s engag­ing film builds to an explo­sive and sat­is­fy­ing cli­max. Crowd-pleas­ing.

Cur­tis Vow­ell and Sophie Hen­der­son­’s Fan­tail is a first fea­ture that shows a lot of promise — and more than a few rewards of its own. Hen­der­son — who wrote the script based on her own one-woman show — plays Tania, work­ing the grave­yard shift at a dead­beat petrol sta­tion, dream­ing of bet­ter things for her and her younger broth­er (Jahalis Nhamo­tu). Its faults are for­give­able — a stage-bound struc­ture and a plot that los­es its way in the final third — when what works works so well. Every­one appears to be cast against type which is a very pleas­ant sur­prise for a New Zealand fea­ture.

I real­ly, real­ly — no, I mean real­ly — enjoyed the Hor­rocks’ fam­i­ly’s Venus: A Quest, in which car­toon­ist Dylan trav­els half way across the world to find out about the fam­i­ly links to astronomer Jere­mi­ah Hor­rocks, who dis­cov­ered the Tran­sit of Venus in 1639. The whole film, clev­er­ly con­struct­ed by Roger and Shirley Hor­rocks, who also directs, turns out to be about curios­i­ty and dis­cov­ery and how we should nev­er stop ask­ing ques­tions and search­ing for answers. Their jour­ney takes them to Liv­er­pool, Bolton, Welling­ton and Tola­ga Bay, where the com­mu­ni­ty there wit­ness­es the 2012 Tran­sit and remem­bers the arrival of Cap­tain Cook and his ship full of sci­en­tists.

Polit­i­cal and activist doc­u­men­tary is well-rep­re­sent­ed as always — the Gib­ney docos are already get­ting well-jus­ti­fied kudos. The most impor­tant sto­ry, in my opin­ion, is Dror More­h’s The Gate­keep­ers in which pil­lars of the Israeli estab­lish­ment — all for­mer heads of the Shin Bet inter­nal secu­ri­ty ser­vice — break ranks with their polit­i­cal mas­ters and tell the awful truth about how Israel has been defend­ing itself over the last 40 years. I saw it last year and thought it was incen­di­ary, and yet some­how it has­n’t explod­ed yet. I can’t rec­om­mend it high­ly enough — exem­plary.

Fire in the Blood is also pow­er­ful­ly argued, if a lit­tle too reliant on doc­u­men­tary clichés to tell its sto­ry. Good job the sto­ry is so impor­tant. Dylan Mohan Grey’s film is about the scan­dalous with­hold­ing of Aids drugs from Africa in the 90s and on into this cen­tu­ry. I had naive­ly thought that pro­vid­ing anti­retro­vi­ral drugs to Africa was George W. Bush’s one great sav­ing grace, but it turns out that his plan was instant­ly hijacked by the giant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and he allowed it to be hijacked. 10 mil­lion peo­ple died who did­n’t need to. Unless pro­tect­ing obscene cor­po­rate prof­its is a need.

Tucked away in the dark recess­es of the pro­gramme, eas­i­ly missed I sus­pect, are two doc­u­men­taries by Shirley Clarke, both about great Amer­i­can artists, both made many years ago and both revived so we may see them again. I liked Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quar­rel with the World more than Ornette: Made in Amer­i­ca (about Ornette Cole­man) but that’s because I like Frost’s poet­ry more than I like Cole­man’s music. The Frost film won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary in 1964, large­ly I sus­pect because of Frost’s twinkly per­son­al­i­ty, undimmed after 88 years. It was an age when films about poets could win Acad­e­my Awards and poets could read a poem with­out it tak­ing longer to explain than it takes to read.

Final­ly, war reporter Sebas­t­ian Junger has made his first film as a solo direc­tor and it is a biog­ra­phy of his great col­lab­o­ra­tor Tim Het­her­ing­ton. Told with much love, Which Way is the Front Line from Here? is about a man who used his cam­era to con­nect with and under­stand peo­ple rather than as a shield or a tool. Het­her­ing­ton and Junger made the bril­liant Restre­po, an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nat­ed sto­ry of a year in the life of a Marine pla­toon in Afghanistan. Het­her­ing­ton, a hand­some and lacon­ic Brit, had spent eight years pri­or to that in West Africa, shoot­ing civ­il wars, and com­ing to under­stand the young man’s need to fight — fight­ing as a form of expres­sion — and how the pow­er­ful exploit that need.

There is so much wis­dom and insight in every sin­gle one of Het­her­ing­ton’s pho­tographs fea­tured in the film. I’ll nev­er for­get it and, chances are, unless the fes­ti­val had­n’t hand­ed it to me blind, I would nev­er have seen it. Take a few chances this fes­ti­val.

I’d like to per­son­al­ly thank NZIFF Pub­li­cist, Rebec­ca McMil­lan, who for years has put up with my requests for con­tent, access, screen­ers, inter­views, tick­ets, etc and nev­er once let me believe that I was­n’t the only media that she was deal­ing with. This year has been par­tic­u­lar­ly hard as I’ve been wran­gling four dif­fer­ent out­lets and she has shown remark­able patience through­out.

[Cross-post­ed from Funer­als & Snakes.]