Documentary Film Festival features the best from around the world.

Documentary Edge Festival
Rialto Cinemas, Auckland
February 27 – March 13

Angelika at Reading Cinemas, Wellington
March 13 – 28

The New Zealand Documentary Film Festival has grown in stature over the five years of existence so that now it has become one of the major international film festivals.

Several of the films are having their New Zealand, Australasian and International premiers over the two week festival.

They range from major films such as “Eco-Warriors” which examines aspects of climate change and the environmental challenges the earth faces through to quiet revelatory films such as Shirley Horrocks’s “Dance of the Instant”.

“Dance of the Instant” tells of the rediscovery of a group of New Zealand dancers who formed The New Dance Group in Wellington between 1945 and 1947.

It was a modern dance company largely co-ordinated by Philip Smithells of the Wellington Teachers College. Some the members had encountered dance in Europe and America with one of the members having worked with the legendary Martha Graham.

The group put on performances which had a social relevance which seems extraordinarily contemporary even by today’s standards. There was a work entitled “Sabotage in a Factory” as well as an eerie “Hiroshima” danced to Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

The group was also used the compositions by Bach and Shostakovich as well as Boggie Woggie music.

It is a fascinating piece of social and cultural history which reveals that New Zealand was not some cultural backwater and that there was a level of intellectual enquiry at all levels. The film also reveals that Bruce Mason was a member but as one of the women, now in her eighties recalls “His dancing could have been a bit better”.

Shirley Horrocks has made use of early footage of the dance group, some photographs and a recreation of one of the works to create an inspiring and informative film.

There is also “Liquid Stone”, a film about Antoni Gaudi’s The Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona and the New Zealand architect Mark Burry who met two of the directors who had worked with Gaudi and was offered the chance to unlock the master’s code. Over the years he began graphically recreating Gaudi’s plans by hand. To speed up this time-consuming process, Burry then took the innovative step of applying aeronautical software which transformed the long process ahead and revealed the astonishing constructive genius of Gaudi’s design.

The newly branded “Documentary Edge”, this year includes traditional film and television as well as new interdisciplinary and cross-media platforms

As well as the Documentary Edge Festival there will be the Documentary Edge Forum and the Documentary Edge Campus with an emphasis in to promoting New Zealand as well as the New Zealand documentary and media industry.

Over 500 films from all over the world were submitted for selection. The final selection of 56 films is divided into 6 categories. These are Best of Fest, World Cinema, Heroes & Icons, Culture Vultures as well as the premier International Competition and New Zealand Competition. There are two Spotlight sections. The first is on China. We are grateful of our festival partner, Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival.

Filmmakers at Selected Screenings

The following filmmakers will be available for a short question and answer session directly after the screening.

Anna McKessar, Five Hours with Raja
Madeleine Sheahan, The Club
Claudia Pond-Eyley and Susi Newborn, Kit and Maynie: Tea, Scones and Nuclear Disarmament
Shirley Horrocks, Dance of the Instant
Shirley Horrocks, He Wawata Whaea: the Dream of an Elder
John Di Stefano, You are Here
Justin Heaney and Charlie Gates, Marching On
Daniel Fallshaw, Stolen
Jason Ressler, Sid Bernstein Presents…
Joe Mundo, When the World Breaks
Safina Uberoi, A Good Man
Bruce Giglio, Bernard Giglio and Phillipe Lenglet, Kiri Wai Inner Skin
Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, New Beijing
Amanda Pope, The Desert of Forbidden Art

www.documentaryedge.org.nz