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| Still Maori Boy Genius |
More details and bookings through the New Zealand International Film Festival site.
1. Pietra Brettkelly's Maori Boy Genius is a coming of age film about Ngaa Rauuira Pumanawawhiti, an astonishing 16 year old. It debuted at the Berlinale earlier this year. It is a must-see, the followup to Pietra's highly successful The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, and has just had two sold-out screenings at the Sydney Film Festival. (NB This is not the same film as the one you may have seen on television.) Maori Boy Genius is edited by Molly Stensgaard, known as Lars Von Trier's favorite editor.
Website
Pietra's website
Variety review at Tangata Whenua
Wellywoodwoman podcast interview
2. First-time director Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is 'the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics'. It comes here via Sundance and Berlin and with a lot of good reviews.
Website
Tumblr.
Interview at Sundance with Alison Klayman, and then the trailer.
3. Shannah Laumeister modelled for photographer Bert Stern before directing Bert Stern, Original Madman, 'the untold and intimate life story of 'bad boy' photographer and cultural icon Bert Stern, the man who has made the worldʼs most gorgeous women his subject for 50 years'. Always interesting to see what happens when a photographer becomes the subject?
Website (fun!)
Shannah Laumeister on Twitter.
Trailer:
4. Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall's Call Me Kuchu is one I've been waiting for. It's about veteran activist David Kato, Uganda's first openly gay man, a kuchu, as the Ugandan LGBT call themselves. Kickstarter funded, I think the first of the films I've included so far, and much-awarded, it too comes via the Berlinale and other fests.
Website
Here's an interview with the directors and the trailer.
5. Corinne Belz directed Gerhard Richter Painting, observing Richter for three years. She also made an earlier film documenting the creation of now seventy-nine years old Richter’s stained glass window for the Cologne Cathedral, as well as Three Women, Three Wishes, One Year about three women aged between 30 and 40 (with Bärbel Maiwurm).
Website
Interview with Corinne Belz
6. I'm hugely interested in South American women's filmmaking, so am delighted to see Maite Alberdi's The Lifeguard/El Salvavidas in the programme, another film that appears to be a 'hybrid' doco, like Alyx Duncan's The Red House.
I can't find a website or Facebook page, but I enjoyed this this interview and here's the trailer, too!
7. Dutch director Eline Flipse's Our Newspaper tells the story of a journalist who starts an independent newspaper in his lounge, in Ulyanovsk, in the heart of rural Russia. It won Best Mid-Length Documentary at HotDocs 2011 and isn't on Facebook or Twitter.
Website
Interview with Eline Flipse.
I can't find a trailer, but here's a wee interview with Eline.
8. Amy Berg's West of Memphis has a New Zealand connection; Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson are among the producers. It ells the story of a long legal campaign to free three Arkansas teenagers falsely accused and convicted of murdering three eight year old boys.
Website
9. Journal de France has two directors, a woman and a man—Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon. He's the legendary photographer and filmmaker and she's his sound engineer, who has assembled and narrated footage that he shot over 50 years.
No social media that I can find.
Tomorrow, the men's docos about women!
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