Dan Slevin previews some of the titles in this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.
Photo: NZIFF
It has been so long since I have had to think about a festival that I find myself unable to type the word correctly first time anymore: “fetsival” keeps appearing when at one time “festival” was second nature.
Last year’s New Zealand International Film Festival ended up mostly online and as a result dropped off my radar entirely. This year the curse of Covid has meant that the entire event has been bumped to October and November, an odd-feeling time for an event that usually provided a mid-winter cinema booster shot but now competes with longer evenings and improving weather. And, of course, we have lost the Auckland leg entirely this year thanks to Alert Level 3.
For the incoming festival director Marten Rabarts, this truly is the most hospital of passes, two almost impossible programming scenarios in a row. He has been in the role for two years, since taking over from the retiring (and now departed) Bill Gosden in October 2019. His jib is impeccably cut – he returned to Aotearoa for the role after decades away working in the European film sector and was appointed after a global search – but he has had no chance to show us which must be enormously frustrating.
In recent years, my advice to festival goers (who seek it) has been to not book in advance but to find the most interesting film playing at a time you feel like going to see one. The serendipity serves to surprise and delight (usually). The big name films – the ones from the front of the book (is there a book this year?) – will get another go around somehow, but this might be your only chance to see the smaller ones.
It turns out that in 2021 this is spectacularly poor advice. Alert Level 2 means social distancing so far fewer seats available. Many sessions are already sold out or availability is limited to “singles on the sides”. The strategy of just rocking up to a session and taking a chance is inadvisable to say the least.
That being said, my tendency to highlight the little guys when previewing the festival remains. As I have done for the last few years, I asked the festival team to spot me a handful of films at random to preview. In my experience, it’s the ones you don’t expect that can land the strongest.
AFTER LOVE
In Aleem Khan’s After Love, Joanna Scanlan plays Mary, a middle-aged English woman who converted to Islam in order to marry her Pakistani husband but who’s world is turned upside down when he passes unexpectedly, leaving evidence of a secret life with a French woman across the Channel. After decades of what she thought was a happy marriage and a contended existence within Islam, she is forced to confront her husband’s hypocrisy without ever being able to confront him.
To compensate, she attempts to confront ‘the other woman’ but finds her certitude wavering especially when she discovers there’s a teenage son to consider.
The film is delicate and consistently thoughtful, not least when involving Mary’s faith (which is an autobiographical detail from Khan’s own family) but our own disbelief has to be suspended significantly because Mary’s inability to face her situation head on doesn’t seem plausible but the whole film hinges on it.
If you buy that, the rest of the film will be moving and illuminating but if you don’t the experience will be one of, “How did we get here?”
Scanlon is terrific as is Talid Ariss as the confused teen and I especially liked when the film drifted out of literalism into the occasional dream sequence but I couldn’t help feeling that too often this was a set of images in search of a film rather than the other way around.
Photo: NZIFF
MANDIBLES
Quentin Dupieux has developed quite a following over the last decade for his surrealist or absurd films about our relationships with inanimate objects: Rubber (2010) was about a killer tyre and in Deerskin (2019) a man falls in love with his leather jacket.
In Mandibles, he has graduated to semi-animate objects as two hapless French crims (Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais) happen upon a giant fly in a car boot and somehow decide that it is the passport to fame and fortune.
A kind of Riviera Dumb and Dumber, Mandibles was a frustrating watch as the charmless heroes were impossible to warm to and it takes an unpleasant turn about half-way through as the film chooses to make fun of brain injury victim Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Colour) and the viewer realises that there’s an ugly strain of misanthrope running through the whole thing.
Not well made enough to justify its simple buffoonery, Mandibles is produced by so many different European film companies, distributors, regional subsidy agencies, etc that it simply looks as if they all kicked in 900 Euros each and said, “How bad could it be?”
Pretty bad, as it turns out.
Photo: NZIFF
LUZZU
On the other side of the subsidised European coin, we have the first Maltese feature film Luzzu.
Jesmark Scicluna plays young fisherman Jesmark, trying to hold true to the traditional ways by fishing from lines off the tiny Luzzu (it’s a type of boat) that has been passed down to him from his great-grandfather onwards. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has moved on to environmentally damaging trawling, the corrupt ignoring of necessary seasonal catch restrictions and even the EU paying fishermen to walk away from their livelihoods.
Jesmark has a new baby who needs specialised care and no way to pay for it (unless you count relying on the unwanted help from is middle-class in-laws).
Dragged by desperation into increasingly dodgy activity, the heartbreak of the film is watching this decent man progressively throw away his principles in order to support his family. It’s a classic tale and one that’s perfect as an introduction to a location we haven’t seen playing itself in films up to now.
The largely non-professional cast are consistently on point and the director Alex Camilleri (along with cinematographer Léo Lefèvre) make sure that the colourful details of life on the island stand comparison with the encroaching world of industrialised fishing and an alienating economy.
Photo: NZIFF
SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS
Best described by a teenage muso of my acquaintance as “mind-blowing” Sisters with Transistors overcomes a clunky title to become a superb history of women making electronic music.
The growing involvement of women in technology during and after World War II, along with the growing influence of public broadcasters (like the BBC), academic institutions, and avant-garde filmmakers, all served to democratise a new art form.
In fact, we can go one step further and say that women didn’t need permission from men to make this music, in many respects they invented it. Painstakingly researched by director Lis Rovner and her team, Sisters With Transistors introduces us to pioneers like Delia Derbyshire (who was instrumental in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and who wrote and created the Dr. Who theme), Laurie Spiegel who – when the mainstream music world refused her entry – built a successful company specialising in electronic music for commercials and eventually publicly accessible computer software, and Bebe Barron who, in 1950s produced the sounds that became the extraordinary score to Forbidden Planet. The Musicians Union hated it – and what it represented.
If you are unfamiliar with this history, the brief 1970s appearance of Wendy Carlos might be confusing. Trust me – delving deeper into her story would have made the film a very different one but I hope that story is on its way.
Sisters With Transistors is a great documentary. Well balanced, lovely narration from Laurie Anderson and an untold story that will overturn your assumptions about 20th century musical history. Don’t miss this.
Photo: NZIFF
NZIFF launches for in person audiences in Christchurch on Friday (29 October), Wellington on 4 November and other centres shortly after. The full programme is at www.nziff.co.nz. LATE UPDATE: The festival has announced that the Christchurch leg has ben delayed a week due to the uncertainty around the Covid situation there.
