Last night the programme for the 37th Wellington Film Festival was launched at the Paramount in Wellington. It’s always a packed event and the hottest ticket in town is the ’still warm from the press’ festival brochure. This year the brochure has a brand-spanking new format. It’s big, it’s glossy and it’s bulging with celluloid treats. The website has also been spruced up and it’s fabulous and informative - check it out at www.nzff.co.nz. And in a smart move the festival is making the most of our obsession with Web 2.0 and have their very own MySpace page where you can see snippets of some of the films on offer.

The 2008 Festival line-up is chock-a-block with good Kiwi talent and includes the largest number ever of feature-length New Zealand films. Well done, we say! Fourteen diverse works from the South to North Island represent the New Zealand of today in all its vibrant shades: idiosyncratic, traditional, outrageous, conformist, gritty, ephemeral.

Here’s what Festival Director Bill Gosden has to say…

It’s been a great pleasure over the last year to discover so much New Zealand work that just leapt up and demanded the wider exposure the Festivals can offer. The sheer range of New Zealanders on screen makes it abundantly clear that our culture is becoming increasingly and excitingly inclusive.

Absolutely! Our local heroes hail from increasingly diverse backgrounds, and the 2008 Festival demonstrates this. T’ai Chi master Loo-Chi Hu and roots musician Tigilau Ness stand shoulder to shoulder with secondary school teacher Mr Peach, cinematographer Alun Bollinger and blues musician Dave Murphy. Along with quixotic artist Warwick Broadhead, they’re vivid proof of the multiple and changing nature of New Zealand society at the moment.

Kiwi life isn’t only captured in documentary portraits: a darker side to suburbia is revealed in a riveting, taboo-prodding crime story, while ties that bind receive equally probing treatment in an Auckland-set family drama.

New Zealand directors who have featured in earlier Festivals:

Vincent Ward’s Rain of the Children re-visits the deeply moving story of the elderly Tūhoe woman who was at the centre of his documentary In Spring One Plants Alone, which debuted in the 1980 Festival.

Florian Habicht follows up his Kaikohe Demolition with Rubbings From a Live Man, a new take in the documentary lexicon as the subject, extroverted anti-hero artist Warwick Broadhead, performs the highs and lows of his not-so-ordinary life.

Gregory King (Christmas) returns with A Song of Good in which a young man struggles to find redemption after committing a dreadful crime.

Gerard Smyth’s (Out of Sight) Barefoot Cinema is an intimate portrait of the life and art of celebrated cinematographer and West Coast homebody Alun Bollinger.

Costa Botes (Saving Grace, Struggle No More) delivers an inspired depiction of blues musician Dave Murphy in Yes, That’s Me. (Screening in Wellington only.)

Robin Greenberg’s (He Waka Hono Tangata) Huloo introduces us to the remarkable life of New Zealand’s very own T’ai Chi master, Loo-Chi Hu. (Screening in Wellington and Christchurch only.)

Alister Barry (Someone Else’s Country) brings Nicky Hager’s scathing portrait of the National party’s election campaign of 2004 to the screen in The Hollow Men.

The New Zealand filmmakers making their first-ever feature debuts at the Festival are:

Sima Urale, whose award-winning shorts have featured in previous Festival line-ups, shows the changing face of New Zealand and two families’ attempts to reconcile identity, prejudice and love in her spirited first feature Apron Strings.

Athina Tsoulis’ Jinx Sister follows estranged adult sisters who are reunited in an engagingly acted drama of family secrets and lies. (Screening in Auckland only.)

Pietra Brettkelly’s The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins is a Sundance-acclaimed portrait of controversial art world star Vanessa Beecroft.

Trouble Is My Business by Juliette Veber focuses on a dedicated and unconventional former Assistant Principal at Aorere College in Mangere.

Bryn Evans’ From Street to Sky is a warm biographical portrait of local roots musician and Rastafarian Tigilau Ness, whose quest for unity in the Pacific has taken him from protest to peace.

Will Moore captures pulsing, rapping, rhyming local emcees and freestylers as they compete for the title of Wellington’s best battle emcee in Clash of the Titans. (Screening in Welly only.)

Kathy Dudding’s The Return is an impressionistic portrait of Wellington, contrasting archival footage of the city from the early 20th century to the city in its present incarnation. (Screening in Wellington only.)

Check out the full Festival programme here: www.nzff.co.nz

Big thanks to the Film Festival for helping rustle up the info for this blog post!

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