Author: Dan

Wellington Film Festival opens tonight!

It’s nev­er been a tough­er time to be run­ning a film fest­iv­al. In addi­tion to the usu­al com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions of just selling enough tick­ets to stay afloat, each year brings with it fresh wrinkles to be accom­mod­ated. The win­dow of avail­ab­il­ity of titles shrinks every year because dis­trib­ut­ors don’t want to sit on their invest­ment. There’s increas­ing pres­sure to get films into cinemas before down­load­ing des­troys the mar­ket and less time for films to build a deserving inter­na­tion­al buzz.

In pre­vi­ous years films like the Argen­tini­an Best For­eign Lan­guage Oscar win­ner The Secrets in their Eyes might have been tent-pole fea­tures for a Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al but have already been and gone from loc­al cinemas so it’s incum­bent on dir­ect­or and chief pro­gram­mer Bill Gos­den (and his cohorts) to dig deep­er to find more gems for our annu­al mid-winter fix.

People keep ask­ing me, Dan, they say, what sort of Fest­iv­al is it, this year, and I have to answer that I really don’t know. I’ve only seen 19 out of the 160+ movies in the book. That’s not enough to know any­thing, really, about the Fest­iv­al as a whole. It’s less than 15% of an enorm­ously rich and diverse smor­gas­bord of poten­tial good­ies.

As usu­al, I asked the Fest­iv­al people to feed me the unher­al­ded and unknown, the films that might miss out on atten­tion from the big media, and they did. As might be expec­ted, not all of them worked for me but I have some sug­ges­tions for films that I am assured will not be com­ing back on gen­er­al release later this year.

In the drama sec­tion I was very affected by Honey, a beau­ti­ful Turk­ish film about a young boy with some kind of learn­ing dis­order, des­per­ate for the approv­al of his teach­ers, class­mates and his tacit­urn bee­keep­er fath­er. A fine example of slow cinema, I feel cer­tain that you will be absorbed by its beauty and the mira­cu­lous cent­ral per­form­ance.

The rest of the Wel­ling­tonista pre­view, after the jump.

Test Cricket

When the New Zea­l­and crick­et team (note not BLACKCAPS™) first toured South Africa in 1953 they had nev­er won a Test Match and were giv­en no show against a ruth­less South Africa, on pitches tailored to sup­port their fast, mean quick bowl­ers.

The crick­et was tough, and vic­tory was ulti­mately bey­ond New Zeal­and’s grasp, but it was­n’t the crick­et that ensured that the series became a NZ sport­ing legend. The 1953 Second (Christ­mas Day) Test is fam­ous for the pro­foundly mov­ing story of one play­er, Kiwi fast bowl­er Bob Blair, and his story has been brought to the stage by tal­en­ted act­or Jonny Brugh (Sug­ar & Spice) and it’s play­ing now at BATS.

Dur­ing the rest day of the Test, Blair got the news that his fiancée Nerissa Love had been killed along with 150 oth­ers in the Tangi­wai Rail Dis­aster. When play resumed on Box­ing Day nobody expec­ted Blair to play any fur­ther part in the game. Without giv­ing too much away, the rest (as they say) is his­tory.

Brugh’s play is a mov­ing and beau­ti­fully acted treat­ment of the story. He plays dozens of parts (Blair & Love; crick­eters Rabone, Reid, Sutcliffe, etc; Prime Min­is­ter Sid Hol­land) and imbues them all with fine detail and a sweet com­ic sens­ib­il­ity. He brings, not just the game to life, but the era – a dif­fer­ent age.

Spartacus R rounds off Soundstage for 2009

The debut sea­son of Downstage’s Sunday music pro­gramme ‘Sound­stage’ has been a tear­away suc­cess. The for­mid­able line-up of bands includ­ing The Woolshed Ses­sions, Little Bush­man, Sam F Scott and The B.O.P and Rhi­an Shee­han have all thrived in the the­at­ric­al envir­on­ment play­ing to capa­city audi­ences.

We’re now at the last Sound­stage gig for 2009 and Wel­ling­ton six piece psy­che­del­ic psy­chonauts Sparta­cus R are the per­fect band to close out the sea­son. Their the­at­ric­al cre­den­tials are impec­cable hav­ing built a repu­ta­tion for unique and innov­at­ive per­form­ances at the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al. At the Fringe 07 they presen­ted Sparta­cus R in Octo­phon­ic, and the fol­low­ing year at the Fringe 08 Sparta­cus R in 3D, com­bin­ing live music with 3D visu­als in the Para­mount.

Based on a found­a­tion of blues, rock and funk, Sparta­cus will deliv­er a cap­tiv­at­ing and elec­tri­fy­ing per­form­ance that explores new music­al and visu­al ter­rit­ory. For Sound­stage on 15 Nov Sparta­cus R have craf­ted a com­pletely new show com­bin­ing 100% new music­al mater­i­al with pro­jec­ted visu­als, act­ors and even live poetry.

More about Sparta­cus R and Sound­stage after the jump.

Rhian Sheehan at Soundstage

This Sunday’s Sound­stage @ Down­stage is a goody – Rhi­an Shee­han plays his album Stand­ing in Silence from start to fin­ish with accom­pa­ny­ing filmic ele­ments by Gareth Moon (Nek­tar).

Guar­an­teed to be like noth­ing you have seen at Down­stage before, Rhi­an’s sound as described by him is “like float­ing through space in a warm bath”.

Described by review­ers as “spine tingling…a tsunami of sound” (Tom Cardy, Domin­ion Post), Stand­ing in Silence at Down­stage fea­tures a full com­ple­ment of live musi­cians play­ing along­side Rhi­an includ­ing key col­lab­or­at­or Jeff Boyle, two per­cus­sion­ists, a string sec­tion, Raashi Shee­han (Rhom­bus), Jerami­ah Ross (aka Mod­ule) and Woolshed Ses­sions mem­bers Jess Cham­bers, Andy Hum­mel and Peter Hill.

For those who like to join in, cus­tom made music boxes will be onsale before the show, which you can play in par­tic­u­lar tracks.

The lus­cious Rhi­an Shee­han: Stand­ing in Silence this Sunday 18 Oct @ Down­stage Theatre.  It starts promptly at the sens­ible hour of 7pm.

For more info check out Simon Sweet­man’s blog , and you can pur­chase tick­ets at Down­stage.

LATE UPDATE: Only 16 tick­ets left!