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big river man

Preview: 2009 Wellington Film Festival

By Cinema

200907152020.jpgThe Wellington Film Festival (sorry, New Zealand International Film Festival, Wellington Branch) is a huge under­tak­ing for the com­mit­ted cinema-goer. Every year we devour the pro­gramme for weeks in advance, schedul­ing annu­al leave and long “lunch breaks”, try­ing to work out what is essen­tial and what isn’t. After 20 years of this, I’ve only just begun to real­ise that in the search for the essen­tial many oth­er pleas­ures have been passing me by. This year, before I even looked at the pro­gramme, I asked the Festival to choose a stack of DVDs for me, with the emphas­is on the unher­al­ded and the unex­pec­ted. Thus, of the 13 films I’ve been watch­ing over the last three or so weeks, all but one of them were from the back half of the book (and prob­ably would not have been on my per­son­al short­l­ist) but all of them had some­thing spe­cial to offer. So, is my advice for the Festival to not book in advance but instead choose films at ran­dom depend­ing on your own avail­ab­il­ity and prox­im­ity to a ven­ue? Maybe it is.

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