THE PRESS PREVIEW THE SHOWCASE COMING TO CHRISTCHURCH, 20 APRIL "Christchurch cinemagoers feeling starved of independent, arthouse and foreign films - temporary salvation has arrived.It comes in the form of the fortnight-long World Cinema Showcase, back after a year's break due to February 2011's earthquake and in a new home at Sumner's Masters Hollywood Cinema."
OTAGO DAILY TIMES PREVIEWS THE SHOWCASE, 14 APRIL Mark Orton previews several films in the Showcase line-up. "The first thing to note about the World Cinema Showcase film festival is that it doesn't "just" include subtitled foreign-language films, although there are quite a few of those too." Read Mark's thoughts on Alois Nebel, Mental Notes, and Once Upon A Time in Anatoliahere.
LUMIERE READER INTERVIEW WITH JIM MARBROOK, 6 APRIL Brannavan Gnanalingam talks to Jim Marbrook about his documentary looking at the atrocious history of mental health care in New Zealand. "“The word has been getting out among more specialised audiences—mental health professionals, educators, that there is some value there. It’s a work that can stimulate some discussion. Artistic value aside—which is in the eye of the beholder anyway—it’s something that can sustain and provoke some discussion." Read the full interview here.
LUMIERE READER REVIEWS FOR THE SHOWCASE, APRIL Jacob Powell reviews Presumed Guilty. "like both Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Christian Bale in Brad Anderson’s The Machinist, Torreton puts his health and body on the line to portray Marécaux’s transformation from a thick wasted middle-aged man into the wasted frame of a near-to-death hunger striker." Read the full review here.
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory and Woody Allen - A Documentary and Tim Wong reviews The Color Wheel. "THE DICHOTOMY and fraught intimacy of brother-sister relations are taken to their logical extreme in Alex Ross Perry’s coarse lo-fi comedy The Color Wheel, a cantankerous double act of wham-bam banter and combustible sibling friction." Read the full reviews here.
Tim Wong reviews Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress. " it’s hard to deny a film that so joyously retreads the steps of George and Ira Gershwin’s ‘Things Are Looking Up’ as performed by Fred Astaire and an endearingly ungainly Joan Fontaine in A Damsel in Distress—the 1937 film Stillman’s creation pays affectionate homage to, and incidentally, one of my favourite musicals of all-time." Read the full review here.
Jacob Powell looks at Jafar Panahi's This Is Not A Film. "That Panahi, facing a hefty prison sentence and the effectual removal of his primary creative outlet, is able to turn out such an unexpectedly gripping piece of cinema is testament to both his quality as a filmmaker and to the resiliency of humanity under all forms of oppression and constraint." Read the full review here.
Jacob Powell reviews The Tall Man and Hell and Back Again. "Hell and Back Again delivers an unnervingly human portrait of the multifaceted effects of trauma on a person, and extends the cliched addage ‘war is hell’ to ‘war is enduring hell’." Read the full review here.
A FISTFUL OF CULTURE, 12 APRIL Dominic Pink rates Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret as the pick of the Showcase. "There were certainly more expertly crafted films released in 2011, but very few were as dazzling, ambitious, passionate, or thought-provoking as Margaret - a glorious mess of a film which I haven’t stopped thinking about for days. Do yourself a favour and catch it on the big screen if at all possible, and tell your friends, because this film deserves to be seen and discussed. Margaret ranks as my top pick of this year’s World Cinema Showcase, and will also feature highly in my list of the best films of 2011." Read the full review here.
CINEFILE REVIEWS THE COLOR WHEEL, 7 APRIL Hugh Lilly reviews Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel. "The film’s set-pieces (JR’s heated argument with her ex; an asshole-filled party she takes Colin to) are terrific, but the duo’s final conversation—a nine-minute single shot, eloquently described by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky in his critique of the film—is among the most surprisingly gripping and involving that the subgenre has yet produced." Read the full review here.
VANGUARD RED MAGAZINE & THE MUSIC FILMS, 2 APRIL Martyn Pepperell looks at the music documentaries. AnDa Union: From the Steppes to the City "is at crux a story about holding onto ones culture in an ever-shifting, increasingly hyperlinked world." Autoluminescent: "Directed by Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn, Autoluminescent strings together historical live concert footage and interviews, inter-splicing them with candid contemporary interviews with aside from Howard, direct peers such as Nick Cave and Genevieve McGuckin; and international fans and associates like Thurston Moore and Henry Rollins."
PETER CALDER INTERVIEWS MENTAL NOTES DIRECTOR, 31 MARCH Jim Marbrook, director for Mental Notes, talks about the issues uncovered in his new documentary. "People are much more aware about bipolar disorder, about depression, he says, and he hopes that the film will encourage viewers to think in a more nuanced way about all sorts of disability." Read the full article here.
NZ HERALD: AUTOLUMINESCENT, 31 MARCH AAPA interview with the producer Lynn-Maree Milburn on the making of Autoluminescent, the documentary on Rowland S. Howard: "He said the film should be [as much] about chronicling what was happening to him at the time as it was about recording the past." Read the full article here.
CINEFILE, 30 MARCH Hugh Lilly previews the Showcase films and gets excited about Damsels in Distress, the design films, the music films and many more on his Cinefile blog. Read the full article here.
A FISTFUL OF CULTURE, 30 MARCH Dominic Pink looks at three Showcase films in details: Our Idiot Brother, Alois Nebel, and Under African Skies. Check out the blog here to find out how many 'fists' he awarded each film.
SARAH WATT BLOGS, 30 MARCH Sarah's picks from the Showcase are repoduced on her blog Lina Llamont. "This annual selection of top-class international films kicks off in Auckland on 29th March before snaking its way south to end in Christchurch on 9th May. Once again, the team who programme our superb International Film Festival each winter have picked out a choice few to whet our appetites as autumn draws in." check it out here.
Helen Martin reviews Mental Notes: "Mental Notes (great title!) traverses similar territory, but in this version the horror stories of the historical iniquities in New Zealand’s mental health system are beautifully and movingly told by five articulate survivors." Read the full review here.
VIEW AUCKLAND SHOWCASES THE SHOWCASE View Auckland profile the Showcase line-up here.
Lewis Bostock will be blogging about his Showcase experience throughout the event. Check out his first posting from opening night here.
SARAH WATT, SUNDAY STAR TIMES, PICKS HER SHOWCASE HIGHLIGHTS, 25 MARCH
"In this annual boutique selection of top-class international films, there's something for everyone."
On The Deep Blue Sea, "[It] boasts a stunning central performance from Rachel Weisz as a woman caught between her husband and her lover."
On Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, "Nothing short of gripping and exhilarating, it is a must-see for anyone interested in criminal justice, regardless of whether they know the case or have seen the previous films."
On Beats, Rhymes & Life "It's a fascinating tale of birth, life and attempted death of a hip-hop group that many say forged the path for all hip-hop to come, and it's as entertaining as it is informative."
On Margaret "A film six years in the waiting, guaranteed to provoke your emotions as much as your thoughts."
Book the annual leave and secure the babysitter now: the NZIFF Selects World Cinema Showcase dates are confirmed. Favourite the Eventfinder listing for your region: Auckland |
Wellington |
Dunedin |
Christchurch
