There’s nothing I love more than the Christmas holidays which see us driving to Taihape and the Bay of Islands to spend time with family, but nor is there anything wrong with visiting a few slightly more exotic locations in December.
There’s nothing I love more than the Christmas holidays which see us driving to Taihape and the Bay of Islands to spend time with family, but nor is there anything wrong with visiting a few slightly more exotic locations in December.
Rialto Channel’s ‘World Cinema’ every Tuesday night give us the opportunity to travel and see the world through the eyes of directors the world over, and their films are filled with daring originality, complex characters and intimately performances to boot.
A fan of photography, this month I am drawn to Everlasting Moments (Tuesday 20th December, 8.30pm), a Swedish film about long suffering mother and housewife Maria Larsson who turns her basic photography skills into a profession, saving her family during the early 20th century and also finding artistic fulfillment.
Beautifully shot in muted tones, this moving and elegant European drama is the work of veteran director Jan Troell, who became known as one of Sweden’s best directors with his work Here’s Your Life, (his debut in 1966), the Oscar nominated The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972). He has been making films and documentaries ever since. Everlasting Moments was released in 2008 to favourable reviews; as critic Roger Ebert simply put it, “It is a great story of love and hope, told tenderly and without any great striving for effect.”
Also screening this month, is Cell 211 (Tuesday 13th December, 8.30pm) which screened at the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival. A multi award-winning Spanish film (the Spanish loved it so much they gave it 8 Goya Awards - the Spanish Oscar’s), Cell 211 is smarter than the usual prison drama. It’s an intense, punishing and gripping action drama filled with twists and turns, with the plot based around a jail warden who must pretend to be a prisoner when there’s a riot at the jail he’s about to start work at.
And wrapping up the month, there’s something quite different with The Legacy (Tuesday 27th December, 8.30pm). A very low key black comedy about a group of French tourists in Georgia (the ex- Russian state rather than the American one) who come across an elderly man heading to a remote village to be killed by a rival family to settle a debt. It all sounds a little crazy, but this primitive act seems to suit the other word of this place. What doesn’t quite seem so normal is that these French tourists decide to tag along to film it all. Let’s just say it’s not exactly a laugh out loud kind of comedy but, as promised, daringly original.
Enjoy
See the full line-up of 'World Cinema' in December HERE