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!