Wellington’s leg of the New Zealand International Film Festival is the highlight of my calendar every year and a huge reason I love winter. I still remember my first film festival film. It was 2005 . Super-Size Me was showing at the Embassy, the first food documentary/expose really ever made back then (which is unthinkable today in the abundance of Netflix food movies we now have on offer). Morgan Spurlock gave a director Q&A at the end. My best friend and I were 15, and I think I wore a powder blue ‘Dickies’ hoodie. We took a photo of the three of us together on my Nokia Camera Phone which I printed and kept for a very long time on my wall.
Over the years I think there is only one festival since then I’ve not actually seen a film at (soz). 2017, however, promises to be a golden harvest of film. As a policy advisor/blogger and Wellingtonian, I have a wide range of interests which I want fed by the festival. I want French romantic comedy, Italian farce, hard-hitting documentaries and American indie classics. This year, the film festival delivers for me, and then some. In particular, I am excited to see two excellent films by New Zealand women directors: My Year with Helen and Top of the Lake: China Girl.
Also on my wish list are three other female directed films - The Love Witch, Risk (all about Julian Assange), Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web. You’ll find me escaping into the world of fashion at House of Z and Dries, practising my University Italian after Call Me By Your Name and feeling French at A Fantastic Woman and Faces Places. I’ve also already enjoyed the excellent clay-mation My Life as A Courgette.
The New Zealand Film Festival is a treasure and I love it like a beautiful eccentric aunt. She’s full of wonder and can take you on a journey. We must care for this old dame, by her a drink and make sure we listen to her wise stories, whenever we catch up with her on those cold Winter evenings as she passes through Wellington.
Lucy Revill writes a blog about Wellingtonians called The Residents.
