NZ International Film Festival 2009 - Music Films

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July 30 – August 16 2009

15 New Zealand cities and towns will this year host the annual International Film Festival which for the first time will relinquish its various regional names to be called the New Zealand International Film Festival.

The Festival which starts in Auckland on July 9 will then travel around the country finishing in Whangarei in November. Until now each region has been promoted with the region’s name despite sharing a common programme and artwork since 2002. The Festival has grown nationally since the merging in 1984 of the Auckland International Film Festival (founded in 1969) and the Wellington Film Festival (1972).

A number of films have already been announced for the 2009 programme, including NZ feature The Strength of Water, Soderbergh’s Che, Oscar winner Departures and major German hit The Baader Meinhof Complex. Further updates will be made on the Festival website www.nzff.co.nz until the full programmes are announced for each city from mid-June.

In 2009 the NZIFF will be held in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch, Palmerston North, Napier, Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Nelson, Greymouth, Masterton, Levin, Gisborne and Whangarei. The Festival is operated by the New Zealand Film Festival Trust, a charitable trust established in 1996.

Regions and dates for the New Zealand International Film Festival 2009:
Auckland July 09 – 26
Wellington July 17 – August 2
Dunedin July 24 – August 9
Christchurch July 30 – August 16
Palmerston North August 6 - 19
New Plymouth August 13 - 26
Napier August 19 – September 6
Tauranga August 27 – September 9
Hamilton September 3 - 16

MUSIC & DANCE

• All Tomorrow's Parties

  Jonathan Caouette, All Tomorrow's People, United Kingdom 2009, 82 mins

  For almost a decade, All Tomorrow's Parties have been occupying weatherbeaten, out-of-season holiday camps on the English coast and turning them into a mecca for adventurously minded musicians and audiences. The weekendlong festivals are an idealistic endeavour, with headliners such as Sonic Youth, the Dirty Three and Mogwai given carte blanche to select the acts they want to share the stage. In the spirit of such anarchic inclusiveness, this documentary distillation hands the reins over to more than 200 filmmakers, musicians and fans. Tarnation director Jonathan Caouette is on hand to make sense of their footage, combing coverage from several festivals to create a freeform assemblage of magnificent strangeness that includes Daniel Johnston's impromptu confessional in the camp courtyard, the swampy blues of Nick Cave's Grinderman, Japan's Boredoms pummelling a quartet of drumkits, the breakneck assault of bass and drum duo Lightning Bolt, the Wu-Tang Clan dueling with liquid swords, Iggy and the Stooges' sinuous raw rock reborn, plus much much more. — MM

  10 Aug | 8:00pm
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  5 Aug | 8:45pm
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  9 Aug | 6:30pm
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* * *

• Every Little Step

  James Stern, Adam Del Deo, USA 2008, 95 mins

  A Chorus Line did for the Broadway musical in 1975 what Robert Altman's Nashville did for the movies. It saw through stardom to find the...

  5 Aug | 6:15pm
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  7 Aug | 2:00pm
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  9 Aug | 1:45pm
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* * *

• It Might Get Loud

  Davis Guggenheim, USA 2008, 99 mins

  Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) throws together a one-off supergroup of three guitarists from strikingly different genres and generations in a celebration of the ultimate rock instrument. The players are Jimmy Page, who defined the classic rock guitar sound in The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; U2's The Edge, whose chiming, delay- and reverb-drenched deedle-deedle-deedle guitar textures are instantly recognisable; and Delta blues-influenced young gun, the twitchy Jack White from the White Stripes. Discussing with each other the defining musical moments that incited their passion for the guitar, they teach each other riffs and nerd out over records and instruments. The Edge is a complete riot when he demonstrates what his rudimentary guitar riffs really sound like when they're not swathed in digital delay effects. The film is riddled with alternately hilarious and genuine goosebump moments; expect a bit of ‘white man's overbite’ and plenty of widdly guitar workouts. — KD

  14 Aug | 6:15pm
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  15 Aug | 1:15pm
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  16 Aug | 2:00pm
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* * *

• Largo

  Mark Flanagan, Andrew van Baal, USA 2008, 112 mins

  At LA nightclub Largo you never know who is going to perform – and texting in or out is strictly forbidden. Directed by the club's impresario Mark Flanagan himself and Andrew van Baal, Largo is an elegant compilation of some of the great indie musicians and comedy acts – those Conchords! – that featured before the club moved in 2008 from its legendary original location. — BG

  “Largo recreates the Largo experience; loose, smart, random and unique... The final film makes you feel like you've been to Largo, even as the more elegant notes in the black-and-white composition and the vignettes of the club's rhythm and tempo between the acts make it abundantly clear you're watching a film that was constructed and not just a tape that was turned on... As good as the comedy is (and some of it is very good), the music is what makes Largo worth watching. Fiona Apple sings in her hushed, feral voice; Jon Brion conducts one of his grand and fractured experiments. Colin Hay and Bic Runga perform intimate versions of intimate songs...” — James Rocchi, Cinematical

  11 Aug | 2:00pm
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  14 Aug | 9:00pm
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  6 Aug | 3:30pm
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* * *

• RiP: A remix manifesto

  Brett Gaylor, Canada 2008, 86 mins

  Brett Gaylor has made an admiring portrait of his favourite recording artist Girl Talk (Greg Gillis), but also raises some fascinating questions about sampling culture and copyright laws. Audio bricoleur Gillis is a fearless musical magpie, with a whizz-bang knack for snatching the best snippets of the daggiest songs (think Gloria Estefan, Journey and Whitesnake) and recontextualising them into sparkling new tracks to create a bastard pop known as mashup. While these spunky sound collages are thrillingly inventive, copyright laws determine that tracks made from pilfered works (Gillis crams uncleared samples from 21 songs into a three-minute track) are utterly illegal. As the NY Times Magazine stated, Gillis is ‘a lawsuit waiting to happen’. Joyously celebrating remix culture, Gaylor and Gillis articulately argue that the line between inspiration and infringement for a media-literate generation is being increasingly blurred, and that reshaping existing creative works for ‘fair use’ should be free from copyright restriction. — KD

  12 Aug | 4:15pm
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  15 Aug | 9:00pm
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  16 Aug | 8:45pm
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* * *

• Soul Power

  Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, USA 2008, 93 mins

  Headlining James Brown, ‘Zaire 74’, the music festival of soul and African-diaspora talent that preceded the Ali-Foreman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, has long lived in legend. More than 30 years later we can finally see and hear why. With access to long-abandoned film and sound recordings, producer/director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte has completed the great concert doco that was always supposed to be. Brown, in peak form, opens and closes the movie, which cherry picks the three-day event for thrilling performances by Miriam Makeba, Celia Cruz, B.B. King (and Lucille), The Spinners, Bill Withers and more. With the benefit of great digitised sound, what further encouragement do you need to experience it all on the giant screen via footage that might have been shot yesterday? The backstage footage is just as epochal, with Ali, Don King and many more Black Power luminaries fronting up.” — BG

  “Another legendary 1970s-era concert sees the light of day through the miracle of technology in the joyously funky Soul Power.” — Eddie Cockrell, Variety

  31 Jul | 4:15pm
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  4 Aug | 4:00pm
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  4 Aug | 8:30pm
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* * *

• Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony

  Thomas Grube, Germany 2008, 108 mins

  A must for any classical music fan, this film proves the principle that you never really know your colleagues until you travel with them. The colleagues here make up one of the great institutions of Western music, the Berlin Philharmonic, seen with their charismatic conductor Sir Simon Rattle during a breakneck concert tour of Asia. Thomas Grube (Rhythm Is It!) has been granted amazingly intimate access to a famously closed and self-governing society of elite musicians. With the tour serving as a probation period for several young players seeking membership of the orchestra, The Quest for Harmony is fraught with serious pressure. On an exhausting journey far from home, caught up in a potent double-bind of duty and passion, the players' commitment is stretched to the limit. Expect thrilling performances of Thomas Adès' ‘Asyla’, Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ and Richard Strauss' ‘Ein Heldenleben’. — BG

  “An outward expedition is eclipsed by a more fruitful inward journey... the tour also acts as a road test for a select few musicians given a probationary period before being tapped as full-fledged members of the orchestra. Except for an exhilarating section set in Taipei where the ensemble gets a rock star's welcome, Asia is almost incidental. The title is both accurate - as it describes where they go - and misleading, as the film's talking heads would be just as fascinating if the tour took place at the North Pole... The charismatic Rattle takes up substantial screen time, but many members of the ensemble also speak on camera, eloquently revealing the disparate personalities that unite to create the single entity of an orchestra.” — Russell Edwards, Variety

  16 Aug | 3:45pm
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  30 Jul | 1:15pm
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  4 Aug | 11:30am
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* * *

• Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love

  Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, USA 2008, 102 mins

  Possessor of one of the most gorgeous voices in world music today, the Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour is widely admired for more than just his singing. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world of art, highlighting his efforts to spread technology in Africa and to fight poverty. He is seen by many Africans as the epitome of global success and self-confidence. This documentary delivers a gratifying amount of that voice in an amazing array of different concert venues around the world. It also provides a close-up picture of the personal crisis N'Dour endured as he negotiated the religious/political fallout from his 2004 album Egypt. Dedicated to his love for the Islamic faith, it was acclaimed as both beautiful and timely in the West but considered blasphemous in Senegal. With N'Dour as its guide – and his proud family looking on – this film reveals the spiritual and musical sources that led to Egypt and what the singer was hoping to achieve for himself and his audience. — BG

  8 Aug | 11:45am
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  9 Aug | 8:15pm
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www.nzff.co.nz