Upcoming events

Loath as I am to let the real world inter­vene in this little oas­is of semi-relevance (and as uncom­fort­able as I am about pimp­ing my com­mer­cial activ­it­ies here), I feel bound to let you know about a couple of import­ant enter­tain­ment options I have a role in.

Firstly, my com­pany, Miracle Pictures, is pro­du­cing the 6^th Latin American Film Festival which gets under way with a Gala Opening Night at the Embassy Theatre on Wednesday night (18 April, 7.30pm). There are a lim­ited num­ber of tick­ets avail­able to the pub­lic and they will go on sale on Monday morn­ing from the Embassy Box Office. Sales will be made on a first-come, first-served basis and will be cash only (due to the Embassy not want­ing to mix my money with theirs for com­plex account­ing reas­ons). Tickets are $20 and for that you’ll get to par­take of some spon­sors product (Corona Extra and caipar­in­has cour­tesy of Scorpion Distribution) plus wine from Argentina and Chile and food from the region cour­tesy of the Latin American Embassies in Wellington.

Oh, and there will be a film screen­ing as well: The Sacred Family (La Sagrada famil­ia) from Chile. The film is rated R16 (Drug use, sex scenes and offens­ive lan­guage) which bodes well for a suc­cess­ful night, I’m sure you will agree.

This year’s fest­iv­al fea­tures 8 award-winning fea­ture films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru (plus two pres­ti­gi­ous shorts). The offi­cial fest­iv­al site is here and there you will find details of all the films and screen­ings in each centre: Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch.

I also want to let y’all know that regis­tra­tions are now open for this year’s “V” 48 Hours, offi­cially New Zealand’s largest film com­pet­i­tion. I am man­aging the Wellington end for the fourth straight year.

Shoot week­end is May 18 – 20; Heats are at the Paramount between 23 and 31 May; Wellington Grand Final will be at the Embassy Theatre on Thursday 7 June.

Following that, the final­ists from each par­ti­cip­at­ing city (plus the Peter Jackson-selected wild­cards) go head-to-head “Live” on C4 on Friday June 22.

All the inform­a­tion you need to take part can be found here. We have space for a few more teams than last year but when they’re gone, they’re gone.