Preview: New Zealand International Film Festival 2012

It’s extremely quiet in terms of new releases in cinemas at the moment. The major inter­na­tion­al dis­trib­ut­ors are keep­ing well clear of the over­whelm­ing force that will be The Dark Knight Rises and the indies know that all the art­house money is going into film fest­iv­al tickets.

This year – for a change – I’m not book­ing in advance for any­thing. There’s so much good­ness in the pro­gramme – and my faith in serendip­ity needs a bit of a boost – that I’ll just see what hap­pens to be play­ing whenev­er I get a spare moment and then give it a go. With well over 150 indi­vidu­al films and short pro­grammes to choose from I’m sure there’ll always be some­thing on that’s going to chal­lenge and enlight­en me.

It helps that, thanks to fest­iv­al man­age­ment, I’ve already seen ten of what’s on offer – ten films that might be easy to miss when flick­ing from one end of the 80 page book to the oth­er. In Rampart, Woody Harrelson finally lays to rest the ghosts of Cheers with a lacer­at­ing per­form­ance as an LA cop who’s as tor­men­ted and cor­rup­ted as Harvey Keitel’s legendary Bad Lieutenant. Collaborating once again with writer-director Oren Moverman (the bril­liant and under-seen The Messenger), Harrelson plays a char­ac­ter so awful that 108 minutes later you are amazed to find you actu­ally care about him.

You’ll find anoth­er troubled cop in Nadav Lapid’s Policeman in which naïve bour­geois revolu­tion­ar­ies meet a cyn­ic­al and cor­rup­ted anti-terrorist squad in what turns out to be a dev­ast­at­ing indict­ment of mod­ern Israel. While the cops are per­suad­ing one of their crew who is dying of can­cer to take the fall for a botched raid in which inno­cent chil­dren died, a bunch of upper-middle class act­iv­ists plan to kid­nap a bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ist to make a point about … some­thing. A slow burner.

Ursula Meier’s Sister seems like a sib­ling to The Dardennes’ The Kid With a Bike. 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) is a thief, raid­ing the lock­ers and unat­ten­ded kit of the well-to-do at the top of the moun­tain and selling it down at the bot­tom. Meanwhile, his errat­ic older sis­ter (Léa Seydoux) can’t keep a job and – for reas­ons that will become clear – isn’t par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in caring for her young­er broth­er. A heart­break­ing little story set against some stun­ning alpine scenery.

There’s more scenery on offer in Julian Roman Pöisler’s The Wall but our prot­ag­on­ist (Martina Gedeck) is trapped inside it. One morn­ing she wakes up to find her­self stuck behind an invis­ible wall that sur­rounds the lodge where she’s been stay­ing. Everything on the out­side has come to a mys­ter­i­ous halt and the only liv­ing things that remain are her pets and a cow. “We’re born alone and we die alone” is one read­ing of this engross­ing exist­en­tial fable.

Documentaries about the cre­at­ive pro­cess don’t come much bet­ter than Bob Hercules and Gordon Quinn’s A Good Man (made ori­gin­ally for PBS in the US). Choreographer and dan­cer Bill T. Jones is as feisty in his own field as Spike Lee and we see all sides of his mer­cur­i­al per­son­al­ity as he struggles to make a pro­foundly per­son­al dance work inspired by the bicen­ten­ary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Brilliantly insight­ful about so many things – race, polit­ics, his­tory, myth­o­logy and art – Jones doesn’t pre­tend to have all the answers and that he isn’t wrest­ling every day with his insec­ur­it­ies as well as his pas­sions. “I don’t want to be saint. I want to be a two-fisted maker,” he exclaims at one point and what won­der­ful ambi­tion to still have at 60.

Equally pas­sion­ate – and equally likely to infuri­ate her col­leagues as well as her enemies – is Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, once the firebrand social­ist lead­er of the Northern Irish Catholic res­ist­ance to British rule in the late 60s and early 70s, now a com­mit­ted com­munity work­er striv­ing to improve the lives of those same people. Whie a lot of the heavy lift­ing in the doc­u­ment­ary is done by ten years of inter­views with McAliskey her­self, the film (Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey) is illus­trated with plenty of archive foot­age remind­ing us what ter­rible times those “troubles” were.

Wellington is rep­res­en­ted in its own fest­iv­al by two fea­tures and at least one fea­ture doc­u­ment­ary. I’ll be look­ing at the dysto­pi­an drama Existence next week and you can read my thoughts about How to meet Girls From a Distance in the pro­gramme itself. (It’s the first time I’ve been asked to con­trib­ute a pro­gramme note – does that com­prom­ise me?)

In The Last Dogs of Winter, Wellington doc­u­ment­ari­an Costa Botes con­trib­utes a smash­ing story that does what all doc­u­ment­ar­ies should do – tells you some­thing you didn’t know before and makes it com­pel­ling. In remote and freez­ing Churchill, Manitoba, Brian Ladoon breeds and fiercely pro­tects the last of an endangered spe­cies – the Eskimo dog. Bred as sled dogs to pull the only pos­sible form of trans­port­a­tion in the snowy Arctic Circle, they’ve been made redund­ant by the pet­rol engine and now there are only a few left. Churchill is also the polar bear cap­it­al of the world and the three spe­cies (man, dog and bear) live in uneasy har­mony as soci­ety and the cli­mate change around them.

There was a time years ago when it seemed like every fea­ture in the fest­iv­al had a short play­ing before it but those days are mostly over. 16 play ahead of fea­ture screen­ings this year, but the oth­er way to see shorts on the big screen is via the anim­a­tion and M?ori and Pasifika pro­grammes or – this year’s innov­a­tion – New Zealand’s Best 2012. Six films com­pete for three prizes and you can see all six at two spe­cial Paramount screen­ings and then vote for the audi­ence favour­ite award. Look out for Michelle Savill’s Ellen Is Leaving – a wist­ful rumin­a­tion on change fea­tur­ing a cast of young Wellington luminar­ies – and Sam Kelly’s Lambs – a slice of kiwi social real­ism with some pro­found moments.

The New Zealand International Film Festival kicks off in Auckland this Thursday (19 July) and in Wellington on the 27^th.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 18 July, 2012.