Movies
LGBT movies in NZ's World Cinema Showcase
By Matt Akersten
21st March 2008 - 10:33 am

The tenth annual World Cinema Showcase is a great opportunity to enjoy some remarkable movies.

The Showcase begins tonight in Wellington, then travels to Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin… so don't miss your chance to see last year's Palme D'Or winner, several Oscar contenders, new films from big-name directors, a mini retrospective from one of the maddest filmmakers in history, along with several insightful and downright shocking documentaries.

The Showcase crew have kindly highlighted four films which are of particular interest to GayNZ.com readers, involving some unique LGBT stories. Here they are, below.

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

An insightful look at one of the most popular photographers of our time, who happens to be a lesbian.

Life through the Lens allows Annie Leibovitz to talk for herself about her work for magazines such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, and about the more intimate work revealed in her remarkable recent book.

Directed by her sister Barbara, the film also covers personal aspects of her life such as her pivotal relationship with Susan Sontag, and includes interviews with converts such as Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Hilary Clinton. The interviews with famous subjects reveal an understandable degree of affection for the woman who makes icons of them all.

View the trailer for the film on the screen below this artcle.

Screenings:

Wellington: 28 & 30 March

Auckland: 7, 9 & 11 April

Christchurch: 28 April

Dunedin 2 & 7 May

Black, White & Gray

An in-depth look at the life and work of art curator Sam Wagstaff and his influence on the life and work of his lover Robert Mapplethorpe.

Wagstaff was a suave, dashingly handsome figure in the New York art scene of the '70's and '80's - but his personal history is a classic case of closeted homosexuality, belatedly and furiously unleashed.

Screenings:

Wellington: 2 & 3 April

Auckland: 14 & 16 April

Christchurch: 19 & 21 April

Dunedin: 26 & 28 April

Moala Noche

"I wanna show this Mexican kid that I'm gay for him" - Walt

From 1985, Gus Van Sant's assured first feature shows that his poetic identification with disaffected outcast youth has been with him for a long time.

Mala Noche introduces us to Walt, who works in a liquor store in Portland, Oregon and his unrequited love for a young Mexican hustler. However, the object of his unrequited affection doesn't even speak any English and finds Walt really strange and undesirable.

Shot on 16mm film for around $25,000USD this is “the first, smallest and most essential planet on the Van Sant solar system," says the Boston Globe.

Screenings:

Wellington: 31 March & 2 April

Auckland: 8 & 10 April

Christchurch: 27 & 29 April

Dunedin: 2 & 6 May

An Island Calling

On July 1, 2001, John Scott and his partner Greg Scrivener were murdered in their home in Suva Fiji. John, from an old European-Fiji family and educated in New Zealand, was the Director-General of the Fiji Red Cross and worked as a go-between in the hostage crisis during the coup of 2000.

New Zealander Annie Goldson's feature documentary is based on the book Deep Beyond the Reef by John's brother Owen, and traces the story of the Scott family, the political crises that have marked Fiji's recent history right up to the present day, the killings and their aftermath, and the volatile mix of colonial privilege, tribal authority, Christian fundamentalism and democracy that exists in the Pacific.

Read GayNZ.com's interview with Goldson here.

Screenings:

Wellington: 3 & 4 April

Auckland: 30 & 31 March, 1 & 5 April

Christchurch: 23 & 24 April

Dunedin: 25 & 27 April

See the World Cinema Showcase official website - linked below - for bookings and further information.