New Zealand Dispatch.

I came late to traveling the world just as I came late to many of the things I now find myself enjoying to the point that I can't see my life without their regular presence - books, coffee and cinema. In fact, it was books that led me to coffee since I prefer to read amongst others rather than in isolation. Coffeehouses and urban public spaces are the perfect places to do just that. And these same spaces are quite conducive to discussing films seen or soon to be seen with others or simply by myself reflecting on past viewings. So it seems a natural projection that a preference for subtitled cinema would lead me to venture into the real of the simulations of cities on screen. In this way, books, coffee and cinema direct my steps as I walk through the cities I am now fortunate enough to occasionally travel within.

Updated through 5/3.

When work placed me conveniently close enough so that a trip to New Zealand wouldn't be as long as if begun from San Francisco, I took advantage of this proximity to venture to the northern island of New Zealand, only having enough vacation time to enjoy a few days in the capital of Wellington and New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland. Each of which had respective film festivals I could attend while visiting, respectively a Latin American Film Festival and Australian Film Festival.

Three days in Wellington, I had already bought too many books, to the point where I contemplated mailing some home. I have gotten much better at selecting books for purchase so I didn't feel any of them were impulsive to the point of regret. It's more the weight and bulk of my purchases and the airline checkout counter's scale that I worried about. The New Zealand book I finished before writing the first draft of this dispatch was entitled On Going to the Movies. Commissioned for the Montana Essay Series established by Lloyd Jones of Four Winds Press in Wellington in order "to encourage and develop the essay genre," each is lovingly designed to fit snugly into your hands. "On Going to the Movies" is written by Peter Wells who co-wrote and co-directed Desperate Remedies. The essay is a personal one, about life lived through cinematic markers, childhood laughter and pants-wetting (the author's brother's pants, not the author's) while watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon, a queer adolescence that highlighted choices in screenings and choices society wouldn't let him make in the hormonally-charged back row seats, and adulthood musings on the Kiwi itch to travel and New Zealand's rediscovery of herself through her own filmmaking achievements. The essay had me thinking about how my mere presence at Café Kyriani in Wellington's Central Business District anthropomorphized one of Wells' theses that the rest of the world was brought to the end of the world of New Zealand through cinema.

Another essay, "On Kissing," by New Zealand poet Kate Camp, was actually one of the first commissioned for the series. It, too, utilizes cinema for inspiration. Besides her also making note of the nookie nooks a night at the movies allows for the hormones of youth, she has a whole section devoted to cinematic scenes of sucking face, or as Camp states regarding certain kisses, "Not so much sucking face as smelling face." She squelches the myth of the Notorious-ly longest kiss in film engaged by Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, but only in order to excavate its truly laudable qualities. The tension is expertly fleshed out between the lips in this classic scene by working within the parameters of the censors that no kiss last longer than three seconds, resulting in a sexy scene that may have been unimaginable if the parameters weren't there to surmount.

There wasn't much kissing going on in Enlightened by Fire (Tristán Bauer, 2005), one of the two films I caught while in Wellington because it was about the War of the Malvinas Islands. I type Malvinas rather than the Falklands since this was a film from Argentina as part of the Latin American Film Festival happening during my few days in Wellington. This screening coincided with the week New Zealand and Australia share the ANZAC Day holiday, which, ironically, commemorates Australia's and New Zealand's military successes, whereas Enlightened by Fire chronicles a military defeat from the viewpoint of some who fought it and who, either in hindsight or truly demonstrative of the time, saw the venture as the defining moment of the fall of Argentina's military regime. As Helen Wong notes in NZ Listener magazine, "It's clearly an anti-war statement in its depiction of scared, barely trained conscripts, brutal officers, lack of a cohesive plan and cold, boggy conditions." Enlightened by Fire is the type of film that we hope will leave us more hesitant to engage in future wars, but, as we know all too well in my own country, some leaders are hell-bent on rushing others' children towards wars in spite of what "anti-war" films tell us. So it's important to realize how every war film risks being both anti- and pro-war. Herein lays one of the important aspects of film criticism - to weed out the ways in which the shadows and lights of intent compete within the same projection of the story. Enlightened by Fire does a better job than some of enshrining the futility of the suffering while still displaying humanity for the soldiers who suffered on the losing side of this venture. It's a film that appears to speak to its nation, while encouraging this son of another nation to learn more about how Argentine history revisions herself.

The other film I sat with at the Latin American Film Festival was the Brazilian film Posthumous Memoirs (André Klotzel, 2000). Beginning with the narrator's death, this life is told to us through a wonderfully cheeky, disjointed narrative. One of the aspects that does indeed ground the narrative is the reliance on sensing the world through our bodies. Noses, eyes, legs are brought to the fore to foretell this story of a life lived with some regrets, yet still fully lived. The same can be said of the production of this film. The quality of the visuals are not Amélie-esque, it does not trod the paths since taken by Pan's Labyrinth, but it is consistent in its own artifice to satisfy its magical realism style. And you just have to smile when the main character rides the hippopotamus, not in spite of, but because of how merry-go-round kitschy it looks.

The Latin American Film Festival would follow me from Wellington to Auckland, but I chose to take advantage of the United Travel Australian Film Festival happening at the Rialto Cinema in the New Market neighborhood of Auckland. The highlight of this festival was a screening of what many consider the first feature film ever made anywhere, The Story of the Kelly Gang (Charles Tait, 1906). The first time it would be screened publicly in New Zealand, it was accompanied on the piano by New Zealander pianist Tama Kamena. These are the moments for which cinema lovers such as me travel. Sadly, like the other two screenings I attended at the Australian Film Festival, it was sparsely attended even though I was watching it on an official national holiday. (In contrast, both the Latin American Film Festival screenings I went to in Wellington were quite well attended.) Still, it was a true treasure to witness. Perhaps I'm the only person who thinks this, so prepare to be offended if you're a purist, but although I appreciate the efforts made by tireless archivists to return prints to levels even more pristine than when released initially, there is something that the natural deterioration of film adds to a screening. Whether pianist Kamena intended this or not, his syncing of the live music appeared to play with the speckling deterioration erupting occasionally on screen, heightening the drama of many of the scenes.

I have to say I felt a little bad that I was in New Zealand watching Latin American, and especially, considering the geographic proximity that naturally brings needling between nations, Australian films. The comedy/horror film Black Sheep was the only home-grown product playing while I was in New Zealand. And it was playing pretty sparsely anyway, giving some support to Jan Corbett's argument in the Auckland-based Metro magazine that Peter Jackson be henceforth known as the "one notable exception" of the film industry in New Zealand. So when I stumbled upon the Auckland annex of the New Zealand Film Commission (the main office is in Wellington) on Karangahape Road and noted that it said "Free Admission," I was even more motivated to see what they held in their archives. And with The Story of the Kelly Gang as inspiration, I looked to see what the oldest extant film they had on video was. Assisted by their helpful staff, I confirmed that My Lady of the Cave (Rudall Hayward, 1922) was the oldest complete film the archives had acquired, but I was also guided to snippets of an older film, Harrington Reynolds's The Birth of New Zealand that itself was birthed a few months earlier than My Lady of the Cave.

My Lady of the Cave involves a lot of swimming for actor Gordon Campbell (real name Bob Ramsey) since his character gets knocked into the water a lot. Along with allowing for glimpses into how beautiful the New Zealand coastline is, this leads our hero to a small island (mostly shot on Mayor Island) where he discovers the eponymous character (played by Hazel West who also has a real name, Hazel Bodley, and if that's not confusing enough, she later became Hazel de Montalk) with whom he quickly falls in love. Rushed away by his love when she fears the approach of a monstrous howl, he paddles back towards his home. Transfixed by this woman, or as Sam Edwards writes in his synopsis for the book New Zealand Film, 1912 - 1996, this "canvas upon which the hero writes, ... completely untouched by hand or mind so that she has to be taught how to be, and thus becomes the template for pioneer womanhood," our main character returns to his muse in order to return her to civilization. What follows this rescue is a subplot involving moonshiners while the "captor" returns to claim The Lady. Eventually this all leads to an explanation of why I put "captor" in quotes. A choice I can't explain because it would involve ruining pleasurable, although muddled, plot revelations. My Lady of the Cave was the first of four silents directed by Hayward which, according to Diane Pavic: "Together they mark the highest achievement of New Zealand's early filmmakers." In 2001, his centenary was celebrated with the premiere of a restored, tinted print of his third silent, The Te Kooti Trail (1927) at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy.

After my private video screening at this public institution, I walked back to the Australian Film Festival. It was time for a documentary called God on My Side, which, ironically, took me back to my home. Australian journalist Andrew Denton produced, directed and narrated the film in which he interviews several people during a trip to the 2006 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Texas. What's valuable for Denton as a national outsider is that he can come to this convention at a distance and he lets the attendees represent themselves. In this way, he doesn't seek to actively present them in a negative light, not intentionally mocking them but letting them do the mocking for him. In this way, we get to see the quality of some of these productions, such as the truly funny clips from a Christian "family-oriented" - here I can explain why I put that in quotes, because such a label often intentionally excludes our queer families which I refuse to do - stand-up comedy series called Bananas. Equally, in allowing these NRB conventioneers to represent themselves, they are all the more frightening because of it. Armageddon is big on the agenda of this convention and we can see clearly each attendee's part in bringing about this ending of their particular take of the Christian narrative. This nihilistic idolization of the Book of Revelations (I can't be Denton and have to let my feelings shine through about the subgroup of Christians Cornel West calls "Christian Dominionists"), is what's most disturbing for me. This film does not present a hopeful view of the politics in my own country, encouraging me to contemplate extending my stay in New Zealand in the ex-pat tradition. (New Zealand, however, isn't free from the influence, as the recent scandal linking the Exclusive Brethren Church to the National Party demonstrates, but is in no way close to the level of political control by Christian Dominionists in the US.)

It's interesting that a documentary about a particular aspect of culture in the United States would be one of the films featured in the Australian Film Festival, since the festival has a significant commercial focus to promote tourism across the Tasman. This is not unique to many international film festivals, since one of the primary sponsors of such festivals are airline companies and foreign consulates. Airline companies know, as my lifestyle demonstrates, film and travel go together like flat whites and friands. But other festivals don't present this aspect as a primary objective. This particular festival's full name is the United Travel Australian Film Festival after all, putting commercial interest front and center. But in showing a documentary about the US as a representative Australian film, they are letting us know that they do seek to present some of the best of recent Australian cinema along with the "Where the bloody hell are ya?" advertisements that proceed each screening. It appears commerce does not have full veto power over aesthetic decisions on what to curate for the United Travel Australian Film Festival.

Further evidence of this was the inclusion of Last Train to Freo, the directorial debut of actor Jeremy Sims. If the festival works to encourage Kiwis to travel westward, they might think twice about heading to Perth, or at the least, of traveling via public transportation while there after seeing this disturbing trip along the last train of the night from Midland to the docks of Fremantle. This disturbing public light-rail mass transit ride of unsuspecting (and some suspecting) fellow travelers from particular life stops along the economic spectrum brings a new meaning to "Beware the Gap" warnings found on public transit lines. (Yes, I know in England you "mind" the gap just as you "alight" the train, but they don't do either along the Perth lines apparently.)

If this film feels like a play, it's because it was, adapted from Reg Cribb's The Return, and in many ways, it still is a play. We are placed in a claustrophobic space of a single train car that fits perfectly in the natural barriers of a play and we have particularly drama-theater-extended emotions from the actors present. This is not a bad thing, as long as you don't require that all dramas seek a "realistic" presentation in how we express feelings. Personally, I allowed for this style of presentation and found much to be mined from the exploration of class and gender issues. There's a particularly nice moment of an audience critique where our penchant for gritty working-class caricatures is confronted along with the first plot revelation. And the placement on a public light-rail mass transit line allows for ironically pleasant and uniquely creative use of diegetic, while arguably equally not diegetic, sound in the form of the ubiquitously, unpalatably, uncreative muzak pumped into each train.

Interestingly, there are no public light-rail mass transit lines in Auckland or anywhere else in New Zealand although there are plans for some in the future. (And this future is the subject of the feature article of the April issue of Metro magazine.) This surprised many I spoke to in the US since one of the stereotypes we have of Kiwis is that they are many times more environmentally prescient than most other countries. But this is the benefit of traveling in the real along with the screen; we are confronted with the complexity of the reality on the ground that cinema can't fully represent. Just as films can frustrate simple genre classifications, the beautiful clerk at the front desk in Wellington made sure I knew that all of New Zealand wasn't the rugby mad nation I presumed.

This is the point of another book I picked up on my travels, Jill Caldwell and Christopher Brown's 8 Tribes: The Hidden Classes of New Zealand. Through a social trend analysis of New Zealanders, they seek to define the variations of Kiwis through their differences rather than the over-reaching similarities that, although intended to be positive, "Most often, these descriptions are collections of tired clichés about resourceful, hardworking, down-to-earth, friendly people, living in a clean, green world, swelling with pride as their compatriots regularly punch above their weight on the world stage." (Equally, the problematic social attitude levelers of "tall poppy syndrome," where one is discouraged to highlight their successes to avoid being perceived as an attention-seeker, and "cultural cringe," where one feels one's accomplishments are questionable when done in New Zealand rather than, say, England, are confirmed, contested and negotiated at length in another engaging book edited by Laurence Simmons entitled Speaking Truth To Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand.) Caldwell and Brown argue, "In science as in life, opposites attract. It's tension, pressure, friction and collisions that create energy. It's the same with our culture. What is remarkable about New Zealanders, and what creates the energy within our society is not our sameness; it's the differences between us all." This same difference is what builds up the tension of films like Last Train to Freo. According to Caldwell and Brown, I'd nestle in nicely with "The Grey Lynn Tribe" if I lived here, since they "are the book-buyers, the readers of 'serious' magazines and literature, the theater [and] film festival goers."

So if I were to eventually decide to expatriate myself here, I think I have a sense of the best neighborhood for me. I probably won't follow through with such flirtations, though. As Andrew Denton has shown me, my country needs me more.

Update, 5/3: The Lumière Reader covers the Latin American Film Festival: Kate Blackhurst on Possible Loves ("a fresh slant on the Sliding Doors concept"), Posthumous Memoirs ("relies upon style rather than substance") and Enlightened by Fire ("the parallels with all wars were obvious"); and Kim Choe on 7 Days (the "premise gets convoluted and a little far-fetched").

Posted by dwhudson at May 1, 2007 1:29 PM