The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) is NZ’s premier film festival, presenting the latest and brightest of national and world cinema to the grandest screens of New Zealand. The event is the cultural highlight of winter in 13 towns and cities around the country. Run by a charitable trust, NZIFF maintains a rich tradition of diverse choice in a curated selection of features, documentaries, and short films too, that we are keen to share with New Zealand audiences.
We’re delighted to see that DocPlay hosts the lion’s share of NZIFF’s big documentary hits of the last decade – Le Ride, Searching for Sugarman, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Vivan las Antipodas!, The Act of Killing, Buena Vista Social Club, The September Issue, Exit Through the Gift Shop and Bill Cunningham New York to name but nine. Here are nine more that we have championed but you may very well have missed – including three terrific films from across the ditch – that do deserve your attention.
* Photo credit: Michael Bradley
Autoluminescent (World Cinema Showcase 2012)
Frail of fame, but formidable in effect, guitarist/songwriter/singer Rowland S. Howard was a pivotal figure on the Australian punk and post-punk music scene, as instrumental as Nick Cave in forging the fiery, original sound of The Birthday Party. In a career with several long intermissions, other great bands followed and two remarkable late solo albums.
“A barbed valentine to a near-genius… fans will love it; non-fans will get a strong taste of the hedonistic alt.universe these people inhabited.”– Jim Schembri, Sydney Morning Herald
Cameraperson (NIZFF 2016)
Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson assembles excerpts and off-cuts from her remarkable career (to date) to evoke an assortment of uneasily resolved questions about ethics and compassion in documentary film.
“In revealing the artifice behind nonfiction filmmaking, it both interrogates the form and gives you renewed respect for those who work in it.” – Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice
DIG! (NZIFF 2005)
Incorporating her camera unobtrusively into the alt-rock world, filmmaker Ondi Timoner spent seven years documenting the developing careers and love–hate relationship of two bands, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
“Without straining, DIG! touchingly marks the lines between cult idol and pop star…And the players are so tangible, so attractive and so much what they are that DIG! may inspire a pop cult itself, perhaps improbably succeeding in making hipness hip again.” – Greg Burk, LA Weekly
The Gatekeepers (NIZFF 2013)
Former leaders of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service agency talk frankly about terrorism, torture, war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this riveting and revelatory Oscar-nominated documentary.
“Exemplary enterprise journalism.” — Wall St Journal
“You’ll be arguing with your friends about the ethics of secrecy and defence for hours.” – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out NY
Manufactured Landscapes (NZIFF 2007)
Jennifer Baichwal’s film provides an eye-opening introduction to the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky who marries art with environmentalism in monolithic portraits of industrial landscapes such as China's Three Gorges Dam.
“A truly unsettling look at contemporary existence [and at] our mania to control and repackage our environment.” – Steve Gravestock, Toronto Film Festival
Putuparri and the Rainmakers (NZIFF Autumn Events 2016)
An emotional journey to meet the traditional rainmakers of Australia's Great Sandy Desert. The film spans 20 years in the life of Tom "Putuparri" Lawford as he navigates the chasm between his Western upbringing and the need to keep his traditional culture alive.
“In this enthralling and ambitious documentary, film-maker Nicole Ma uses the hard-won changes in the life of Tom Lawford to examine the distance between the traditional and modern way of life.” – Craig Mathieson, Sunday Age
Tender (NZIFF 2014)
What would happen if funerals were taken out of a business structure and put back into community hands?
In Lynette Walworth’s remarkably warm and rewarding documentary we meet a feisty community group in Port Kembla, NSW that sets out to bypass the corporate drivers of the funeral industry and set up their own non-profit funeral business.
The Salt of the Earth (NZIFF 2014)
The life and work of Sebastião Salgado, the undisputed master of monumental photojournalism, is explored in this wonderful doco, jointly directed by his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and German director Wim Wenders.
“Wim Wenders’ mastery of the documentary form is again on display in The Salt of the Earth, a stunning visual ode to the photographer Sebastião Salgado.” – Jay Weissberg, Variety
This is Not a Film (World Cinema Showcase 2012)
“This is Not a Film is, in fact, a great one.” – Eric Kohn, indieWIRE
Accused of treasonous activity for planning a film about protest in Iran, Jafar Panahi was banned from filmmaking for 20 years. While under house arrest, awaiting an unsuccessful appeal against a six-year prison sentence, he worked with filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb to produce his self-described ‘effort’ (not a film, mind you). It proves to be a canny heartfelt exploration of what constitutes making a film and what might not.
Shot entirely in Panahi’s home and incorporating many amusing real-life interruptions, notably his daughter’s humongous scene-stealing pet iguana, Igi, the ‘effort’ is amazingly swift and quick-witted, finishing in a breath-taking rush of action.
