Offscreen Notes
Auckland Film Festival
Founded in 1970 as a component of the Auckland Festival, the Auckland International Film Festival in time became a fund-raising event subsidising live arts. Rescued from this role by the intervention of the Federation of Film Societies in 1984, the 34th Festival in 2005 achieved an audience in excess of 100,000.
Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of cinema’s most prestigious award, the Cannes Palme d’Or, will open this year’s Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals and screen in the country’s four main centres. It is just one of many Cannes winners to play at the Festivals. “We are delighted to have scooped this controversial film for the opening of the 2006 Telecom New Zealand International Film Festival. This year’s programme is clamorous with films of activism and protest, so it’s the perfect year to be celebrating this richly deserved accolade to one of cinema’s most persistent agitators,” says Bill Gosden, Festival Director.
Other films include, Korea’s A Bittersweet Life, Canada’s C.R.A.Z.Y., Hard Candy and many more major films of the past year.
