2008 New Zealand International Film Festivals taking place in 16 cities across New Zealand. The festival runs in Hamilton between August 14th and 31st at Rialto Cinemas
We have some fantastic films this year, with a particularly strong field of films about sustainable living, eco-communities and environmental issues. The films are:
Films about Sustainable Building, Eco-Communities and the Environment
Garbage Warrior
Sunday 31 August, 11.30 am
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
Friday 29 August, 11.30 am
Sunday 31 August, 3.45 pm
Sharkwater
Saturday 23 August, 1.45 pm
Sunday 24 August, 1.45 pm
Up the Yangtze
Wednesday 20 August, 6.15 pm
Thursday 21 August, 11.30 am
Other films of interest:
Let's Say...
Tuesday 26 August, 6.15 pm
The Wave
Sunday 24 August, 8.00 pm
Monday 25 August, 8.15 pm
The Hollow Men
Friday 22 August, 6.00 pm
Saturday 23 August, 1.00 pm
Trouble Is My Business
Sunday 17 August, 3.45 pm
Frozen River
Friday 22 August, 1.30 pm
Saturday 23 August, 3.45 pm
It's a Free World...
Saturday 30 August, 6.00 pm
The Visitor
Sunday 31 August, 5.45 pm
All films are screening in Rialto Cinemas.
Further information about each film is provided below, and detailed overviews and some trailers can also be found on our website ( www.nzff.co.nz - once on the homepage, select your region to browse films on at the Festival in your home town).
Brief Overview of each film
1. Garbage Warrior
A film about environmentally sustainable housing, and community-owned projects. Building out of materials like beer cans, car tires and plastic water bottles as well as rammed earth, architect Michael Reynolds' houses rely upon only the earth's natural resources to heat, cool, water and power them. The film also shows Reynolds and his team's work in building new housing and reconstruction projects in tsunami and earthquake struck parts of South Asia and Mexico.
2. Pete Seeger; The Power Of Song
This rousing, affectionate biographical portrait of singer/activist Pete Seeger, now in his late 80s, is also an overview of 20th-century American folk music as a form of protest for civil rights and environmental movements across the US. In the 60s Seeger turned "We Shall Overcome" into the anthem of the civil rights movement. He was kept off American television for 17 years on account of his left-leaning views, but never lost his audience.
3. Sharkwater
Underwater videographer, eco-warrior and hunk, Rob Stewart is passionate about sharks. Years in the making, his spectacular film puts us within snorkels' length of the ocean's unjustly demonised predators, then plumbs the depths of the multi billion-dollar shark-fin trade to show how over-harvesting sharks destroys the food chain and puts the world's ecosystems at risk. "This beautiful and urgent eco-doc takes a bite out of the shark mythology made indelible by Jaws. Sharkwater argues that these ancient creatures are as friendly as dolphins, and relatively safe."
4. Up the Yangtze
This documentary observes life on the soon-to-be-flooded banks of the Yangtze from aboard a cruise ship taking English-speaking tourists up the river. We meet a handful of the people whose lives are being the most deeply affected, and we become especially well-acquainted with two of the ship's young restaurant workers: a woman from a dirt-poor family whose shack close to the river will very soon be drowned, and the brash son of a middle-class family. Their very different responses to westernisation are subtly shaded and speak volumes about the price of China's headlong rush into the future.
Social Interest films
5. Let's Say
What do kids think their parents do at work? This film asks kids from different areas of France and different ethnic backgrounds to act out their parents' work days. First asked to rank various professions in order of importance, the children are then invited individually to describe their parents' jobs. These include farmers, doctors, policemen and circus performers. Finally, provided with simple costumes and sets, they create skits based on those occupations. Some of the views expressed are whimsical, others show surprising sophistication. The farmers' children, for example, would be much more competent at delivering a calf than 90% of their elders.
6. The Wave
A high school teacher's unusual experiment to show his students what life is like under a dictatorship spins horribly out of control when the movement takes on a life of its own. Within a few days, what began with harmless notions like discipline and community builds into a real movement: THE WAVE. When the students start ostracizing and threatening others the teacher decides to stop the experiment. But it's too late. THE WAVE is out of control...
7. The Hollow Men
The "stolen" insider emails that informed Nicky Hager's best-selling account of National's 2004 election campaign return in Alister Barry's (Someone Else's Country) new film - just in time to caution us against campaigning politicians in 2008. Whatever your political leanings, this makes for essential viewing.
8. Frozen River
First-time director Courtney Hunt took the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature at this year's Sundance Festival for her nerve-wracking thriller. The finely etched anti-heroines are two matter-of-fact, desperate women who traffic illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River into the US. One woman's white, the other Native American and they have more in common than their ingrained mutual distrust will allow them to admit. The precariousness of their hard lives, bringing up young families without support, is sharply observed and compellingly played out in the mounting danger of their nightly excursions over thawing ice.
9. Trouble is My Business
Assistant Principal Mr Peach of Aorere College battles to keep his students in school and out of trouble. Aorere College is situated in the heart of Mangere. The school struggles to cope with widespread social issues inherent in the local community and has a history of street gangs within the school, high levels of truancy and low academic achievement. In an environment where the morale of both the students and teachers is at an all time low, Mr Peach single-handedly persists in his belief in the kids and their right to an education. He fights to keep them in school through a mixture of tough discipline, street knowledge, negotiation, support and encouragement - whatever it takes. As a life-long inhabitant of the area, Mr Peach has a profound empathy for the kids and an understanding of the complexity of their problems. Armed with this insight and convinced that his students have potential, Mr Peach adopts unconventional methods to reach out to the students and their families.
10. It's a Free World
Veteran masters of social realism Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty (My Name Is Joe, The Wind that Shakes the Barley) return with one of their most involving character-centred dramas. Angie is a feisty East Ender, a solo mum who loses her job in a recruitment agency and sets up an agency of her own, placing semi-legal immigrants. A sexy blonde dynamo on a motorbike, she strikes deals and dishes out jobs to Polish, Ukrainian and Chilean workers for construction sites and clothing factories.The deeper she gets into this dodgy business, the more she is determined to prove her mettle, defying her old unionist dad, her nervous business partner, and her own generous nature. Loach and Laverty dramatise the human price of free market enterprise with every risk she takes and every choice she makes.
11. The Visitor
A shy, disillusioned Economics professor returns to his New York apartment to find it occupied by a couple of illegal immigrants. Convivial Tarek is a talented drummer who encourages Walter out of his protective shell, while his girlfriend Zainab carries the burden of their perilous citizenship status. Each learns something new, but just when you have this film pinned, it takes off in an unexpectedly dramatic and moving direction.
