Slightly Intrepid

12 July 2020

Film Festival 2020 lineup

Emily Skeggs & Kyle Gallner in Dinner in America

Well it's definitely going to be an odd Film Festival this year, and we should be grateful we have any titles in cinema at all, unlike much of the rest of the cinema-going world. Instead of my traditional 20 films, mostly seen in the wonderful 450-seat Embassy Grand, I've booked a mere five films from the small selection on offer at the Roxy Cinema in Miramar.

This is the first year following the retirement of the great Bill Gosden as NZIFF director, and no doubt new director Marten Rabarts wants to stamp his own mark on the festival, and in the circumstances of a global pandemic that has interrupted the supply of quality and popular films alike, that was always going to be challenge. It's great to see that the initial announcement of an online-only NZIFF20 has been superseded by a hybrid format with some cinema screenings, but it's anyone's guess how successful the online aspect of the programme will be.

For one thing, the quality and range of films available to the programmers must have been severely limited by the disruption to studio and indie production chains. In addition, it's unclear how the festival-loving public will respond to being asked to pay full ticket price for an online viewing experience. The whole point of a cinema experience is savouring the impact of a splendid screen and the best sound equipment theatres have to offer. Watching at home, no matter how high-quality the screens involved, is an implicitly inferior cinematic experience.

There's also the challenge that may arise from the early inklings of Rabarts' programming preferences. While it may be a factor of the limited palette of titles available this year, it's apparent that he wishes to promote niche cinema to a greater extent than Gosden. The festival circuit is by its very nature a broad church, but over the years Gosden developed a finely-pitched balance of populist, obscure and strange programming that helped NZIFF to thrive and grow for decades. He knew the New Zealand cinema-going market back to front. While 2020 may well be an outlier, Rabarts, who until recently hadn't lived in New Zealand for decades, will need to programme to the tastes of this admittedly culturally isolated market, rather than those of other countries. Perhaps I'm wrong though, and there's a great pent-up demand for niche genre films out there.

Here's the films I'm catching in NZIFF20, plus five more titles I'm likely to try to catch online:

In the cinema

The Truth (La Vérité) (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, France/Japan, 2019)

One of my favourite directors continues his masterful examination of the complex dynamics of the family environment, stretching himself with his first non-Japanese-based production. Set in France, The Truth features a splendid cast (Deneuve, Binoche, Hawke) and will undoubtedly be a festival highlight.

True History of the Kelly Gang (dir. Justin Kurzel, Australia, 2019)

From the Peter Carey novel of the same name, this revisionist history of the famed Australian bushranger features not one but two New Zealand connections, with Thomasin McKenzie and singer Marlon Williams both featuring.

The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, Australia, 1977)

A second Australian outing, this time from Weir's 1970s creative peak (although I'll always admire the hell out of 2003's Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World), this nightmarish vision of gothic Outback mysticism sounds intriguing and just a little bit bonkers.

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson & The Band (dir. Daniel Roher, Canada, 2019)

While I haven't seen the Levon Helm-centred Ain't In it For My Health, this documentary will be a wonderful counterpart to the astonishing musical experience of Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978), giving the marvelously talented Robbie Robertson his perspective on this fractious, beautiful legacy of the groundbreaking and hugely influential (mostly) Canadian legends, The Band.

The County (Héraðið) (dir. Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland, 2019)

You can never have too much Icelandic cinema, and this woman-against-the-world tale from the icy countryside sounds like the perfect counterpart to the director's brotherly feuding saga, Rams (2015).

Online

The Kingmaker (dir. Lauren Greenfield, US/Denmark, 2019)

Illustrating the irredeemable arrogance and unquestioning egocentrism of the now-80-something Imelda Marcos as she discusses her joint reign as the Philippines' First Lady for 21 years, unrepentant and still determined to control 'her' nation through advancing the political career of her son Bongbong.

The Unknown Saint (dir. Alaa Eddine Aljem, France/Morocco, 2019)

In what sounds like a perfect set-up, a Moroccan petty criminal returns after a jail sentence to dig up a stash of wealth, only to discover a massive shrine erected atop his hastily-dug treasure trove.

A Year Full of Drama (Aasta täis draamat) (dir. Marta Pulk, Estonia, 2019)

A documentary crew follows a young Estonian competition-winner as she takes up the challenge of a year of theatre-reviewing, having never before seen a play.

Kubrick by Kubrick (dir. Gregory Monro, France, 2020)

Taking advantage of unprecedented access to tapes of the director in conversation with French writer Michel Ciment to fill in the many gaps in our understanding of the much-analysed genius director. A fine addition to my Kubrick completism, having loved Filmworker and amazing Kubrick exhibitions in New York and London.

Dinner in America (dir. Adam Rehmeier, US, 2020)

A crowd-pleasing 1990s-set suburban outsider girl-meets-boy epic with supporting cast work from Lea Thompson and Mary Lynn Rajskub sounds right up my alley.

04 July 2020

On the encounter at Turanganui River

Nicholas Thomas, on the second violent encounter between Captain Cook's Endeavour crew and iwi at the Turanganui River entrance in what is now modern-day Gisborne:

One of the things that I would like to know about what happened around this river entrance on 9 October 1769 is at what point it became inevitable that people would be injured and killed. The previous evening's incident [in which the English killed a man threatening their pinnace] suggests that Maori were disposed to resist and repel the intruders, so Cook's commitment to landing and making contact perhaps made some clash unavoidable. Yet there is no indication in Maori behaviour on the morning of the 9th, before the shooting started, that they had planned any massacre or even intended physical harm. They were defiant, and once they saw what the visitors had, they were eager to obtain it from them in whatever way they could. Perhaps there was no retreat, no way of defusing this, once [the ship's astronomer] Green's hanger [a small-sword] was taken. The Europeans fired because they would not submit to being stripped of their property, and because of what they feared, with or without justification. They started shooting to prove that this sort of encounter was susceptible to their control, but they convinced neither the Maori nor themselves.

- Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook, London, 2018 (revised edn.), p.90-1.

30 June 2020

One of the great tragedies of the Ring

"Introducing 'Miss Zelfredo, the world-famous snake-charmer', the ring-master said: 'It is with great regret that I have to announce one of the great tragedies of the Ring. Doreen Zelfredo's python, which had been with her for six years, died on Friday at Knowle. I am sure the audience will join with me in sympathy for Doreen, and in the wish that she may soon find a new pal. If ever a woman loved a snake Doreen did. Miss Zelfredo will now enter the ring and perform her act without her snake'"

- James Agate, diary entry, 30 July 1942, quoted in Roger Hudson (ed.), The Folio Book of Days, London, 2002, p.186

18 June 2020

Cars and trucks and things that go

Below are two screenshots from my current Transport Fever 2 game on a French-themed map. There's one of a late-model tram plying the busy streets of the city of Deurdan, ferrying people between the southern and northern train stations and the aerodrome on the northern outskirts of the city. And the other shows a massive diesel freight train transporting what looks like a small load - planks, perhaps, I can't see closely enough - as it passes through an intermediate freight station loaded up with ore for another train on a separate route to collect.

I've been playing TF2 since January, having been inspired by the walkthrough videos of vlogger Katherine of Sky, who explained the basics with admirable clarity.

It's not a graphically complex game, but the bones are solid. One of the best features of the game is the player's success or failure in shipping essential goods to towns on the map is the main driving force in how quickly those towns develop. And the game evolves the buildings, vehicles and townsfolk's attire as the calendar progresses through the decades, starting out with horse-drawn carriages, cobblestoned streets and hooped dresses, and eventually graduating to modern cities featuring towering skyscrapers and 21st-century light rail. You can influence the direction the city grows in by spending funds on new roads, but without this input the city will grow organically, with a pleasing sense of realism.

One of the things I particularly enjoy about TF2 gameplay is it's quite challenging to make ends meet for the first fifty-odd years of the game from 1850 onwards, during which time the prevailing technology levels mean you have to rely on expensive and puny early steam engines that can barely haul any cargo, and tiny horse-drawn wagons and coaches that are incredibly slow and have limited capacity. It's really hard to make a living in the early years, and it's expensive to build the rail networks that will eventually unlock the full potential of moving goods and people around the map efficiently.

But when you realise that by filling in the gaps between a bunch of separate rail lines, and adding a few signals and double-tracking tweaks, you can fling a cargo from one end of the map to the other and make a huge profit to boot, it's a golden simulation gaming moment.

I'd best be off: my electric passenger trains are getting old and I'm itching to build a TGV line.

05 June 2020

The siege-breaking balloons of Paris

Important to military aviation in Europe was the founding, in 1870, of lighter-than-air detachments within the Prussian Army. Assisted in their creation by Englishman Henry Coxwell, two Luftschiffer (airship) detachments were used immediately for service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. However, it was the defenders of besieged Paris that history most remembers.

Cut off from outside help by Prussian forces, the Parisians made use of six balloons held within the city to fly out despatches, often under groundfire, the first by Jules Durouf on 23 September 1870 rising over Prussian lines and on to Evreux. Thereafter, a truly remarkable manufacturing programme was started in Paris, using railway stations and other large buildings to assemble additional craft, with gas coming from the Villette works. By 28 January 1871 a total of 66 balloons had left the city, carrying more than one hundred persons, some three million letters and carrier pigeons. Of these, two are thought to have been hit by groundfire from Prussian guns and seven drifted in the wrong direction. The escape of pigeons had been a vital element of the operation, as chemist Barreswil invented microphotography in October 1870 to allow the birds to return to Paris carrying messages, with the first flying from Tours to Paris on 18 November.

- Michael JH Taylor, Aviators: a History in Photographs, London, 2003, p.89-90.

02 June 2020

Portrait of a drinker

Tonight's virtual film festival outing, Ulrike Ottinger's 1979 film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin / Ticket of No Return, which sees Tabea Blumenschein (who sadly died in March) as the nameless 'She' singlehandedly depleting West Berlin of all its alcohol in a singleminded campaign of surrealist binge drinking whilst decked out in ludicrously glamorous couture straight out of a Duran Duran video. It's probably indicative of an evening going majestically awry if punk poetess Nina Hagen is one of your bar buds, and you decide that crashing through a wall of flaming boxes on the bonnet of a car is an ideal post-pub activity. Absolutely no idea what the hell was going on, but had a great time not figuring it out.

Bildnis Einer Trinkerin can be viewed temporarily on the Youtube channel of the We Are One international film festival.