Nocturnal Sunshine

Well today there is time to squeeze the out the last of sol­stice by squeez­ing out a quick post to mark the occa­sion.  Mid-winter is offi­cially here with the end of the shortest day, the end of the grow­ing power of cold and dark­ness and the start of the growth of warmth and light.  While there is plenty to cel­eb­rate about mid-winter (mulled wine, boots, hats and scarves spring to mind) there is some­thing heart­en­ing in the know­ledge that the days will be get­ting longer and us hardy Wel­ling­to­ni­ans can give ourselves a pat on the back for sur­viv­ing the worst of it with our love for Wel­ling­ton intact.  After all, there is no such thing as bad weath­er, just bad clothes.

You may or may not have noticed but the ener­gies of the Wel­ling­tonista have been diver­ted into the twit­ter­stream some­what of late, but hey we find plenty of our read­ers there these days too!  Sol­stice is get­ting a few a men­tions around the place and I found  this charm­ing tweet:

@RowanSmith Went to Druids’ sol­stice do at Stone­henge Aotearoa. Druid: “We give thx to the powers of the East and to the guy hold­ing this light for me”

So we are curi­ous, do you mark Sol­stice?  Are you plan­ning any­thing for Matariki this week?  Let us know in the com­ments or on twit­ter @wellingtonista, a post on hot tips for Matariki is planned for tomor­row.

Whare ’nuff

This Thursday the 18th of June, Deidre Brown’s “Maori Archi­tec­ture: from Fale to Wharenui and Bey­ond” will be launched at the School of Archi­tec­ture in Vivi­an St.

The cel­eb­ra­tions will start with a mihi at 5:45pm, fol­lowed by a lec­ture at 6 and drinks at 7. If you’re inter­ested, please con­tact Christine McCarthy (04 463 6164 or christine.mccarthy@vuw.ac.nz) to RSVP before the end of tomor­row (the 16th).

Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra – Tickets Giveaway

The Wel­ling­ton Inter­na­tion­al Ukulele Orches­tra have flicked us a couple of tick­ets to give away for their upcom­ing show at the Michael Fowl­er Centre (Sat 27 June). 

To be in to win, watch their new ‘It’s a Heartache’ video, then email info@wellingtonista.com with the sub­ject line: WIUO Com­pet­i­tion, and in the body of the email, answer this ques­tion: what is the fla­vour of the tart that fea­tures in the video?

Com­pet­i­tion closes Noon, Wed 24 June.

Win­ner has been noti­fied! Thanks for all the entries.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqynAAYdLW8]
 

Bus STOP

Hey, Mr Bus Driver, that per­son run­ning down the foot­path, wav­ing at you, just ten metres or so from the bus stop? They prob­ably want to get on the bus.

And the guy who’s just got on and tells you to “wait, there’s someone just com­ing” – he’s prob­ably want­ing you to wait, ‘cos there’s someone com­ing.

I under­stand you’re the ‘Express’ – but, really, no-one is going to be put out if you wait an extra 5 seconds to let a strag­gler catch up (espe­cially if you spend a minute har­anguing a pas­sen­ger for dar­ing to try and pay their fare with a $20 note.)

Censor this!

I’m sure most Wel­ling­tonis­tas would agree that Aro Video is the best video hire place in town, so when our sub­scriber news­let­ter included the head­ing “We inter­rupt our reg­u­lar pro­gram for this import­ant announce­ment…” we could­n’t ignore it, and in fact we felt it was our duty to pass on this import­ant mes­sage:

CAMPAIGN FOR CENSORSHIP REFORM

We are spear­head­ing a cam­paign for cen­sor­ship reform and are call­ing upon the sup­port of our val­ued cus­tom­ers and the wider film-lov­ing pub­lic.

We believe that the cur­rent legis­la­tion is ser­i­ously out­dated and unfairly dis­ad­vant­ages the medi­um of DVD. As such, it has severely impacted on what titles can be made avail­able for rent, sale or trade with­in New Zea­l­and.

The main reas­on for this are the ‘pro­hib­it­ive’ costs of clas­si­fic­a­tion fees, and par­tic­u­larly the cri­ter­ia for which titles are sub­jec­ted to the costly exam­in­a­tion pro­cess. For example, it would cost over $2200 to clas­si­fy the highly acclaimed ori­gin­al BBC mini-series of “State of Play” (the Hol­ly­wood remake of which is cur­rently play­ing in cinemas).

This cam­paign is not “anti-cen­sor­ship” but we insist that the cur­rent levels of reg­u­la­tion are no longer appro­pri­ate for today’s media and cul­tur­al envir­on­ment. We simply would like to be able to provide you with a great­er range of qual­ity enter­tain­ment, and help elim­in­ate the ridicu­lous double-stand­ards that cur­rently pre­vail.

For more inform­a­tion, please vis­it our online for­um at www.lumiere.net.nz/censorship-reform, where you can also register your sup­port, com­ments and sug­ges­tions.

Also, if you know of oth­ers that would be inter­ested in this cause, please pass on this e‑mail or the for­um address, or spread the word by Facebook/Twitter, etc.

A ser­i­ous “show of hands” will make a dif­fer­ence, so don’t be shy! Thank you for your sup­port.

Kind regards,

Andrew Armit­age
pro­pri­et­or
AroVideo Online

“Experimental filmic punk experience”

Yowza – what on earth could that be I hear you won­der­ing.…. I’m a little unsure myself but this week/end from 11–13 June the Film Archive cinema (corner of Tarana­ki and Ghuznee Sts) is going to be explod­ing with the best of exper­i­ment­al film from Aus­tralia. 

Three of the lead­ing lights of the genre –  Sally Gold­ing, Joel Stern and Dirk de Bruyn – have been brought over with help from the Aus­trali­an High Com­mis­sion to present three nights of mind-blow­ing enter­tain­ment.

Each night prom­ises to be some­thing a little dif­fer­ent, kick­ing off with the his­tor­ic­al then the god­fath­er of Aus­trali­an exper­i­ment­al film, fol­lowed up a riot­ous con­clu­sion of hand­made and hand pro­cessed film, feed­back sys­tems, incon­gru­ous foley noise, sprock­ets and flick­er, trum­pets and strings, spe­cially pre­pared screens and ali­en­ated nar­ra­tion.

You’d be crazy to miss this cal­ibre of per­form­ance in a live set­ting. As NZFA Pro­ject Developer Mark Wil­li­ams says…

Big Freeze Video

Video of last week’s ‘Big Freeze’ (pre­vi­ously blogged about by Sue here).

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WezMQg_LCpQ]

  Cour­tesy: The Sidestrip

A week of it

What a week to look for­ward to!

Tues­day 9th: Pecha Kucha at the OPT from 6:30pm. We love these nights, and this time they’ve got writers, artists, car­toon­ists and land­scape archi­tects (among oth­ers) in the line-up. Those with a prac­tic­al interest in street art might have to rush there from the At Large plan­ning meet­ing at Manky Chops, which starts at 5:30.

Wed­nes­day 10th: Artist Matt Hunt (aka Ace Hurt from Cor­tina) launches his new exhib­i­tion at Peter McLeavey gal­lery at 5:30pm (link for Face­book types). The title “Dream­ing of a New Heav­en and Earth and the Etern­al Night­mare of Hades” makes one won­der just what to expect from the after-party at Mighty Mighty.

Thursday 11th: Did someone say “Bur­lesque”? Oh, right, we did.

Fri­day 12th: If you’re plan­ning to go to Fly My Pret­ties, you’ll no doubt have had this night booked well in advance. Oth­er­wise: it’s Fri­day! Enivrez-vous!

Sat­urday 13th: More fly­ing pret­ti­ness, with a Mat­in­ee as well as the even­ing gig. But if you prefer your pret­ties more earth­bound, and think that feath­ers are best used for fan dan­cing, bring your pen­cils along to Dr Sketchy’s life draw­ing class at Mighty Mighty at 4pm.

Sunday 14th: The much-hyped City Mar­ket finally opens at Chaf­fers Dock. The hours (8:30am-12:30pm) might not appeal to night owls, but their Twit­ter feed sug­gests that there’ll be plenty to tempt us out of bed.