NZIFF 2015 Autumn Events unveiled

NZIFF 2015 Autumn Events unveiled

Bertolucci, The Beatles, Kubrick and Pinocchio. NZIFF presents giant screen classics at Autumn Events.

Putting spectacular cinema classics onto spectacular cinema screens is one of the great pleasures of working at NZIFF. Every winter we relish the challenge of breaking out the new, but there’s something strangely refreshing about revitalising the tried and the true every autumn. For the third year our Autumn Events Classic Film screenings aim to provide the perfect supplement to the popular revival screenings at the annual mid-winter festival. Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and two very different Kubrick epics – Spartacus and2001: A Space Odyssey – all come to us in freshly minted studio digital transfers, while new digital restorations give us the best possible reason to celebrate A Hard Day’s Night and Bertolucci’s ravishing The Conformist. As the HD era continues apace, the choice of great films in digital formats expands. Films conceived to be projected on the grand scale are a priority for us – and no one ever accused Walt Disney, Bernardo Bertolucci or Stanley Kubrick of thinking small. We also love the sense of occasion that gathers around films best seen in a crowd: Beatlemania works so much better as a group activity. You don’t have to have been there the first time around to know that. In fact I’m a little envious of anyone encountering these films for the first time at these screenings: they will be looking astounding and sounding terrific. Go straight to our site or scroll down for links to screening details for all five films. And because giving is what we like to do, you’ll find an extra March giveaway at the end of this extra March newsletter. Bill Gosden Director NZIFF Autumn Events Classic Movies in Auckland screen from Thursday 16 April through to Sunday 19 April at The Civic. NZIFF Autumn Events Classic Movies in Wellington will screen across three weekends in May at the Embassy Theatre. Tickets will be on sale directly from the Embassy Theatre. On sale date to be advised. NZIFF Autumn Events in Dunedin screen from Friday 17 April to Sunday 19 April at the Regent Dunedin. Tickets are now on sale directly from the Regent Dunedin. NZIFF Autumn Events in Christchurch will screen across three weekends in May at Hoyts Riccarton, starting on Saturday 2 May. Tickets will be on sale directly from Hoyts Riccarton. On sale date to be advised. Classic Movies screening at NZIFF Autumn Events 2015 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick’s looming monolith of sci-fi spectacle needs no introduction. But can you say you have truly seen 2001 if you haven’t seen it on a giant cinema screen? “It feels as intelligent and provocative as ever, bearing years of conceptual dreaming. Until today’s equivalent of novelist Arthur C. Clarke commits a hefty chunk of time to envisioning the beginning of human civilization, as well as the far ends of the future, there will be no new film that supplants it.” — Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York Spartacus Young Stanley Kubrick stepped up to filmmaking on the grand scale to direct the most literate and enjoyable of all Hollywood’s ancient-Rome epics. Producer/star Kirk Douglas is forever remembered as the shirtless rebel slave, but it’s the rest of the cast who give the film its zest. The immortal “I am Spartacus” aside, it’s the villains that have the best lines in writer Dalton Trumbo’s sly characterisation of the decadent and divided slave-trading one percent. The Conformist Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 masterpiece is a psychological-political thriller set in Mussolini’s Italy. A monument to art deco style, The Conformist intoxicates with its exultant design and chills with its furious, contained energy. This new release is the result of a 2011 restoration from original source materials, supervised by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and approved by Bertolucci. Pinocchio It takes a giant screen to reveal the wealth of detail literally drawn into every frame of this 75-year-old Disney wonder. With battalions of animators at his disposal, Disney transformed Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale about an obnoxious living puppet into an action-packed moral fable about a gullible one – and a virtuoso example of pure cinematic storytelling. A Hard Day's Night “A glorious new 4K digital restoration with a remixed and remastered soundtrack produced by Giles Martin (son of longtime Beatles producer George Martin). The movie certainly hasn’t looked or sounded this good since 1964 and the net effect is one of wonder and revelation.” — Andrew O’Hehir,Salon.com