AUTOMORPHOSIS

Maybe cars always express their owners, so let’s be thankful for the colourful individuals who take that expression into their own hands. Documentarian and art-car creator Harrod Blank celebrates some of the visionaries, artists and cheerful eccentrics who have turned their cars into elaborate mobile works of art. Blank furthers the obsession he elaborated in Wild Wheels (NZIFF1993) in this affectionate, funny, completely delightful sequel. He doesn't try to oversell his subject (unlike an awful lot of recent docs), but gets his idea – that most of these cars are really extensions of the rest of these people's eccentric lives – across with little fuss. He lets them talk about their lives and show us their cars. His affection for the gregarious personalities on display is contagious: just like them he wants to obliterate industrial conformity and show off a little individual splendour.