First Film Announcements for Autumn
One New Zealand premiere and three classic films are the first of our Autumn Events announcements for Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch. Further Autumn Events titles and on-sale dates will be announced through March.
The four films are Terrence Malick’s journey through space and time, Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, narrated by Cate Blanchett; a return to the peace, love and music of 1969 with seminal documentary Woodstock; Werner Herzog’s legendary Fitzcarraldo, and Woody Allen’s definitive love letter to New York, Manhattan starring Diane Keaton, and Meryl Streep.
We’ve jumped at the chance to present these giant screen spectacles on the grandest screens in the country. Bigness is definitely a criterion when it comes to selecting our annual line-up of classics. And when it comes to scale, it’s hard to think bigger than Terrence Malick does in the one premiere we are announcing today, which take 90 minute to encompass the beginning and end of time. NZIFF July is still a while away, and programming is well underway, but we encourage you to start booking out your diary now for those winter weeks at the movies.
Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey
Forty years in the making, Terrence Malick’s mind-boggling Voyage of Time takes us on a breathless trip through the birth of the stars, the evolution of life on earth and sea, and its eventual obliteration. Narrated by Cate Blanchett.
“It’s an experience that I haven’t been able to shake, like a waking dream.” — Richard Brody, New Yorker
Over four days in August 1969, 400,00 young Americans travelled to farmland in NY State for a music festival. Facilities could not cope. But The Who, Janis, Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi were on fire. A spectacular 70mm multi-screen documentary by Martin Scorsese was released the following year, and now almost 50 years later, there could be no better way of exploring mythology than a giant screen experience of this newly digitised director’s cut.
“Describing Woodstock as a concert movie is a little like calling Notre Dame a house of worship.” — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Shot in ravishing black and white CinemaScope and backed by an all-Gershwin score, Woody Allen’s romantic comedy from 1979 surely earns its title: it is one of the great cinema’s great odes to New York. It’s also Allen’s best and definitive film. Presented in 4K digital format scanned from the original camera negative.
“Manhattan is a great film about love in and love for New York.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Part fiction, part inspired true-life story, Klaus Kinksi plays an Irish adventurer in early 20th century Peru who dreams of building an opera house in a remote Amazon port. Local indigenous people are persuaded to assist in a quixotic adventure that took four years to make, three changes of cast, and the dragging of one 40-tonne steamboat from one river to another over a steep isthmus.
“Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is one of the great vision of the cinema, and one of the great follies.” — Roger Ebert
Autumn Events screens in Dunedin, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch in April and May. Schedule will be advised later in March. The confirmed dates are:
- Dunedin, 21 – 23 April, Regent Theatre
- Wellington, 6 – 7 May, 13 – 14 May, 20 – 21 May, Embassy Theatre
- Christchurch, 6 – 7 May, 13 – 14 May, 20 – 21 May, Hoyts Riccarton
- Auckland, 11 – 14 May, The Civic
