Bill Gosden has spent the past 30 years as New Zealand's national film festival director and a few years before that, he was with the Wellington Festival. In 2009, the organisation, run as a charitable trust, was renamed the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF), and takes place in 13 towns and cities around the country, with the Auckland event kicking off this Thursday.
Having a suitable screening venue in the towns and cities is a priority. Across the pond in Australia, the Sydney Film Festival stands out because it has the 2,775-seat historic State Theatre as its principle venue. In New Zealand, many cities have ornate old theatres as their focus and in a land which strongly values its heritage, they have been guarded protectively.
There's the Civic in Auckland, the Embassy in Wellington and "the fabulous Regent in Dunedin", Gosden says proudly of his hometown theatre, built in 1928. He also notes the festival has been part of a fundraising campaign to get state-of-the-art digital equipment installed in the rebuilt historic Isaac Theatre Royal in earthquake-ravaged Christchurch. "So we'll finally have a splendid 1,200-seat venue there."
To make each location work, Gosden relies on interested locals from each city. "It may be a stakeholder with a vested interest in the location and sometimes it's a film society or a local exhibitor."
Given New Zealand's small population of 4.43 million, the NZIFF is an important means for independent films to be seen, particularly in the age of Hollywood blockbusters and with the diminishing distribution of art house films, particularly those in a language other than English. "For subtitled films that aren't in French, it's got to the point where we're the only game in town," Gosden notes.
On the other hand, commercial Chinese-language films do get screened in mainstream New Zealand cinemas, so they get little festival play.
