New Zealand International Film Festival 2014

It’s less than 2 weeks till The Welling­ton round of the New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Typ­i­cal Welling­ton behav­iour at this time often includes — Courte­nay Place place being full dur­ing day­light hours — peo­ple tak­ing no lunch breaks to allow for an extra long lunch break to catch a film — tak­ing a day off work […]

Preview: 2011 Film Festival

Despite the shock­ing and inex­plic­a­ble deci­sion to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robin­son in Ruins from this year’s Film Fes­ti­val (a dis­as­ter applic­a­ble only to me I think) the actu­al line-up is as good as every­one says. At least I think it is from sur­vey­ing about 20 out of the 160+ titles in the pro­gramme — hard­ly […]

Kids’ Film Festival

transformers in disguise!One of the more excel­lent things we’ve seen land in the Welling­ton­ista’s intray that allows har­ried par­ents to enter­tain their kids for FREE these hol­i­days, is the Film Fes­ti­val tak­ing place down at the Film Archive. So if you’ve got a loved one at home look­ing after some house­bound kid­dy-win­kles, give ’em a call and tell them to head along…

Clas­sic Car­toons for Kids includes the world’s first Mick­ey Mouse car­toon Steam­boat Willie (1928), Walt Dis­ney clas­sics To Itch His Own (1958) and Fer­di­nand the Bull (1938), plus a 1933 pup­pet ani­ma­tion by New Zealand’s own Len Lye. Also on the pro­gramme is Mau­rice Sendak’s clas­sic chil­drens tale Where The Wild Things Are (1973). This pro­gramme is for chil­dren aged 5–12.

Ani­ma­tion Nation — New Zealand Ani­ma­tion 1936–2006 col­lects New Zealand ani­ma­tions from the past 70 years for an audi­ence of kids aged 10–13+. The pro­gramme takes in clas­sic stop-motion, clay­ma­tion and 3D ani­ma­tion. One of the high­lights of Ani­ma­tion Nation is Mr Stinky’s World of Trash (2006), a 3D film made by local ani­ma­tor Mike Heynes. Vis­i­tors to the screen­ing will be giv­en a spe­cial pair of glass­es to enhance the effect of char­ac­ters leap­ing out from the screen and mov­ing in space! Also on the entire­ly New Zealand bill are two films by Len Lye includ­ing The Birth of the Robot (1936), and James Cun­ning­ham’s award win­ning dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion Delf (1997). This pro­gramme is for chil­dren aged 10–13+.

Both pro­grammes run for approx­i­mate­ly 45 min­utes are guar­an­teed to enter­tain kids and their par­ents. The Archive will sell­ing it’s usu­al range of cof­fee, tea and refresh­ments to hun­gry Kids Film Fes­ti­val goers.

Loca­tion: New Zealand Film Archive Mediathe­atre
Time: 11am

  • Wednes­day 4th July
    Clas­sic Car­toons for Kids (Ages 5–12)
  • Mon­day 9th July
    Stop Motion, Clay­ma­tion & 3D (Ages 10–13+)
  • Tues­day 10th July
    Clas­sic Car­toons for Kids (Ages 5–12)
  • Wednes­day 11th July
    Stop Motion, Clay­ma­tion & 3D (Ages 10–13+)

[pho­to: frame enlarge­ment from The Birth of the Robot (1936) by Len Lye. cour­tesy of the Len Lye Foun­da­tion Col­lec­tion; New Zealand Film Archive / Ngä Kaiti­a­ki O Ngä Taon­ga Whitiähua]

Film Festival Sneak Peak

Some of you will be like me and sav­ing your pen­nies up for the 36th Welling­ton Film Fes­ti­val. It hits town on July 20th and runs till August 4th.

If the ear­ly line up announce­ment of some glob­al­ly antic­i­pat­ed films is any­thing to go by it’s going to be yet anoth­er great see fes­ti­val.

My top 3 picks are:

Perfume

Wellington Film festival — We Recommend…

God! Where to start? We’re about a third way through the pro­gramme & EVERYTHING so far looks like a must see. Kudos to Mr Gos­den & his team this year. Dis­claimer: Our opin­ions are not infal­li­ble, we saw a promis­ing­ly enthralling doc­u­men­tary a few years ago called Hybrid… and it was lit­er­al­ly watch­ing corn grow… […]

A preview of coming attractions.… soon!

That’s a clever quote from Hitch­cock­’s Rear Win­dow… But that’s irrel­e­vant right now… Com­ing soon (only just scored the brochure, so bear with us)… I’ll give you my leg­endary (unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any spon­sors — so far…) Film Fes­ti­val run­down. What’s hot, what’s good (they’re all good), what’s heart-war­m­ing, what’s art-house, what’s sleaze, what’s art-house sleaze, […]

The Film Festival that lasts all year long…

We thought we’d be the first to post here actu­al­ly. That’s “we” because James has giv­en strict instruc­tions that there is no “I” in “Welling­ton­ist”. Um… pos­si­bly he said it “starts with “we””. But any­way, it’s clear already who the team play­ers are, eh? So we had this epiphany in the bath last night. (By […]