Celebrating 50 years in Auckland

It is impossible to think of the national and international film culture that took shape in Auckland in the late 1960s and through the 1970s without seeing Roger Horrocks in the thick of it. He founded the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at The University of Auckland, co-founded Alternative Cinema, Artspace, NZ On Air and NZ On Screen. He has served on many industry boards and provided encouragement and support to many of our most notable filmmakers.

He was the youngster on the team that brought the first Adelaide/Auckland International Film Festival and was an energetic initiator of some of the festival’s most forward-looking programming. Here, in a piece written a decade ago for our 40th anniversary, he recalls the first decade.

The late Wynne Colgan (d. 2011) chaired the organising committee of the Festival from its inception, initially in collaboration with Adelaide, through a decade of continuing growth, until 1978. At that point the Auckland Festival Society (no relation to the current event) decided a theatre chain might be a more fitting partner than a committee of cinephiles. Ironically, they soon found themselves dependent for much of their programme on the Festival founded in Wellington in 1972 by Lindsay Shelton and the Wellington Film Society.

Wynne’s account of the first Festival, published in the N.Z. Listener on October 24, 1969 provides a typically wry account of the mishaps and cultural collisions; and an insight into the Festival’s origins in the youth revolution of the 1960s. “In this city of 600,000 there are young people, intelligent, interested and informed enough to make the venture well worthwhile.”

Jackie van Beek, currently tearing up the box office with The Breaker Upperers, can thank NZIFF for a great pair of Timberland boots. Continue Reading...

Hamish Bennett’s Ross & Beth won the jury prize for best New Zealand short film, as well as the audience and cinematography awards, at NZIFF04. Hamish takes time out from post-production on his feature Northland to recall some life-enhancing moments at The Civic and SKYCITY Theatre. Continue Reading...

In the late 70s, some months before he directed his first feature, Angel Mine, David Blyth went with cameraman John Earnshaw to an Auckland International Film Festival screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, a celebration of the cinema of the unconscious. Continue reading...

Pietra Brettkelly, whose most recent documentary feature Yellow is Forbidden is her fourth at NZIFF, reveals how she selects her festival viewing. Continue reading...

Auckland broadcaster Wallace Chapman recalls two formative NZIFF experiences from his Otago days. Continue Reading...

Chelsie Preston Crayford grew up with NZIFF but was surprised to find her first short film shanghaied onto the programme in 2013. Continue Reading...

Brendan Donovan, director and co-writer of The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell, remembers an obliging projectionist at the World Premiere of his film at the Civic in 2010. Continue reading...

Alyx Duncan is the director of The Red House (NZIFF 2012) and winner in 2015 of the Madman Entertainment Jury Prize for her short film The Tide Keeper. She relates two unexpected consequences of NZIFF attendance. Continue reading...

Co-director David Farrier compares the Civic New Zealand Premiere of Tickled at NZIFF Autumn Events 2016 with a nerve-jangling World Premiere at Sundance. Continue reading...

Haiku and bouquets from documentarian par excellence Annie Goldson.

"In Auckland’s valley
Tickets flutter, gleam whitely
Like the Civic’s stars" Continue reading...

Director Florian Habicht’s relationship with NZIFF began in tears. Seven features later, he has provided some of NZIFF’s most unforgettable nights at the movies. Continue Reading...

Robyn Harper, who has graced NZIFF in numerous professional roles over the years, has chosen to recall the Festival from her place in the audience. Continue Reading...

Sir Bob Harvey, a long-time friend to NZIFF in Auckland, recalls the perils of foreign film exhibition back before the Festival hit the screen. Continue reading...

Shirley Horrocks’ invaluable documentary portraits of New Zealand artists have been a regular feature at NZIFF for two decades. She still gets nervous. Continue Reading...

“Where real human stories can be appreciated and realised by a real and appreciative audience.” Music to our ears from filmmaker Paora Te Oti Takarangi Joseph (Tātarakihi; Te Awa Tupua – Voices from the River). Continue reading...

Eric Kearney, long-time manager of the Civic Theatre for Amalgamated Theatres, then Hoyts, and the man behind the Information Desk until 2016, revisits changing fashions in film appreciation. Continue reading...

Filmmaker Gregory King recalls rejection and acceptance from NZIFF programmers. Continue Reading...

Veteran reviewer and feature writer Mark Knowles recalls a time when merchant bankers Fay, Richwhite sponsored the Auckland International Film Festival. Continue Reading...

Civic projection hero Francis Van Kuijk recalls the physical effort entailed in presenting a film festival on film; and the more refined torture of digital presentation. Continue reading...

Andrew Langridge, a trustee since 1996, came for Shakespeare and stayed for the movies. Continue reading...

Director Roseanne Liang explains the ways in which she feels at home at NZIFF. Continue Reading...

With Allie Eagle and Me in 2004, Briar March was the youngest filmmaker to have had a feature premiere at the Festival. Two years later, attending a Festival screening of a four-hour documentary about children with cancer turned out to be seriously consequential. Continue Reading...

Christine Massey recalls 30 years’ professional association with NZIFF, most recently, until her retirement in 2017, as Sales Manager at Sony Pictures, New Zealand. Continue Reading...

Director Zoe McIntosh shares a tip for the red carpet. Continue Reading...

Films can change lives. Director Paul Oremland recalls the thrill of seeing his 100 Men (NZIFF 2017) do just that. Continue reading...

Our long-time High Priestess of front-of-house – first at the Civic from 1978, then ringing the bell at SKYCITY Theatre from 2000 until 2016 – Joy Owen could fill a book with what she knows about the Film Festival, its organisers and its audience. Continue reading...

Leanne Pooley, whose Haunting Douglas premiered at NZIFF in 2003, compares her roles in contrasting exercises in inter-cultural understanding in Tokyo and Auckland. Continue reading...

Thirty years a film reviewer, Nicholas Reid saw too many great films at the Festival to pick favourites. He names a few rather good ones anyway. Continue Reading...

Miriam Smith, co-director with Chris Pryor of How Far is Heaven (NZIFF 2012) and The Ground We Won (NZIFF Autumn Events 2015), carries a torch for NZIFF. Continue reading...

In 1975 Geoff Steven’s Test Pictures: Eleven vignettes from a Relationship was the first New Zealand feature to screen at the Festival, and one of the first ‘experimental’ films from anywhere. He remembers perplexity in the house. Continue Reading...

Director Rebecca Tansley (Crossing Rachmaninoff, NZIFF 2015) celebrates NZIFF as a portal to the wide world. Continue Reading...

Volunteer Adam White has been showing festivalgoers to their seats since 2002 – and staying to watch movies he would never have chosen to see. Continue Reading...