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 […]