"Unless you’re someone who moves in the industry itself, the film festival in your citizen of residence tends to be the one you know and the one you cherish. Even if you start keeping score of the different states you happen to have passed through, chances are you didn’t blow three weeks in a big dark room all day watching a Truffaut remaster, or a slowly-paced observation of life as Tilda Swinton. For this reason at least, the festival remains a slice of Auckland (and beyond’s) cultural life that no one has to consider with constant, yawning deference to overseas experience (cf: eating, festivals, nightlife, public transport). So all I know is that the NZIFF is generous with its guest discussions but light on pomp and ceremony; that it screens the big, must-see crossovers of the year alongside a selection of worthy films we would never even stumble across otherwise; that it avoids the dyspeptic oneupmanship of festivalgoing by running a bunch of splatter B-movies alongside the worthy documentaries. We’ve very glad it’s this time again." - Joe Nunweek, The Pantograph Punch
Article published July 14 2014 at The Pantograph Punch
