At the World Cinema Showcase, Robert Mapplethorpe through a different lens. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

Black, White + Gray is a snapshot of enigmatic art curator Sam Wagstaff and his relationship of mutual exploitation with renowned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The documentary, by first time director James Crump, is primarily focused on the lesser-known Wagstaff. A privileged and handsome Manhattanite, Wagstaff worked for a time in advertising, which he hated, before his prolific career as an art curator and collector.

At the World Cinema Showcase, a revenge film of forgiveness. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

A THOUGHT-provoking parable of forgiveness and reconciliation, Dry Season (Daratt) examines the aftermath of Chad’s decades long civil war. As the film opens, a radio broadcast announces an amnesty for war criminals. The grandfather of 16-year-old Atim (Ali Bacha Barkaï) responds to the news by ordering Atim to avenge his father’s murder. Arriving in Chad’s capital with a handgun, Atim soon discovers his father’s killer Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro) is a sickly bakery owner with a young wife. Inexplicably accepting a job with Nassara, the young Atim realises he is drawn to the man, even as he continues to plan his revenge. Filmed on dusty streets of Chad, the third feature by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s (Bye Bye Africa, Abouna), Dry Season is notable for its visual and storytelling simplicity. Essentially a two-character drama, subtle and searing performances by Barkaï and Djaoro ensure the ethical sand between the two constantly shifts. Right up until its sudden and unexpected conclusion, Dry Season offers no simple answers to its complex moral questions – asking us instead to consider the cost of justice.

At the World Cinema Showcase, America’s War on Terror conspires to destroy one man. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

IF THERE’s one documentary that will cause you to furrow your brow and shake your head at the supposed “War on Terror”, Strange Culture will probably be the one. However, it’s not an Iraq-doco; instead, it looks at exactly how the Patriot Act, and the racial and political paranoia in post September 11, 2001 United States, have all conspired to basically ruin one man, Steve Kurtz’s life. When Kurtz’s wife dies of heart failure, he calls 911 for assistance, and thereby sets in motion a Kafka-esque assault on freedom of speech and his civil liberties. And he’s still to face trial at the time of writing.

At the World Cinema Showcase, a typeface makes a star turn. By TIM WONG.

IN EXPOSING the inferior (but to the untrained eye, indistinguishable) typeface Arial for what it really is – an inbred phony – Helvetica champions and despises its own ubiquity. The most entertaining documentary of the New Zealand International Film Festivals last year, it makes a welcome comeback by virtue of its point of difference, paving the way for likeminded design documentaries interrogative of visual communication. Neutrally presented, yet fastidiously profiled, Gary Hustwit plays biographer in giving life and personality to the film’s eponymous lead character, before turning him/her over (the font is rather androgynous, so it’s hard to say) to a gallery of outspoken opponents and fervent supporters. In typographic speak, Hustwit’s talking heads – a fascinating array of practitioners, whose celebrated names are usually relegated to the pages of glossy design publications, but find a voice as part of the documentary’s enlightening and expert commentary – draw their lines in either positive or negative space. The only middle ground to be found is in the unconscious desktop publisher, an indifferent slave to the expediency of 12pt Helvetica beneath a letterhead, or throughout a lackadaisical résumé. For students of graphic design especially, lending an ear to such keynote speakers as Erik Spiekermann, Neville Brody and Stefan Sagmeister is invaluable: all engage with humour, cogency and great wit, although Raygun creator David Carson comes off as a hasbeen, while the inept Michael C. Place proves little more than a purveyor of shallow, inconsequential visual noise. Neither for nor against the Everyfont, Helvetica does have a purpose: to ensure its viewers think twice about the form, function – and perhaps even consequences – of the typeface they choose to use next.

At the World Cinema Showcase, a distant conflict. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

MAD HOT BALLROOM relocated to a Ugandan refugee camp, War/Dance represents two documentaries at conflict with each other. The first is a compelling human drama of children battling to regain normalcy in their lives amidst the tragedy of war; the second is an attempt to make suffering palatable to foreign audiences, in this case a crowd-pleasing tale of underdogs taking on Uganda’s best in a nation-wide music competition. In this respect the film is well intentioned, but at times unsettling.

Operation Filmmaker is a disquieting, and blackly humorous portrayal, screening at the World Cinema Showcase, of good intentions and its far-reaching consequences. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to director Nina Davenport about the Iraq War, liberal guilt, and the personal nightmare into which she was sucked.

Annie Goldson’s An Island Calling is a sobering documentary looking at the murder of John Scott and Greg Scrivener in Suva in 2001. Drawing in complex issues such as postcolonial identity, evangelicism, and ethnic conflicts, it’s one of the more thought-provoking documentaries at this year’s World Cinema Showcase. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM had a chat with Goldson about the film.

At the World Cinema Showcase, Romania delivers a formidable centrepiece. By TIM WONG.

PREGNANCY is no joke in Cristian Mungiu’s paralysing, instantly absorbing film, a Cannes winner with a view to a kill. Unlikely to be received in the red states, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days rarely flinches or skips a beat in mapping its trajectory of two Romanian women – one pregnant, the other an accomplice – in pursuit of an illegal abortion under Ceausescu rule. As the film hits the ground running, it tails Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), in close proximity, as she carries out a series of measures specified by underground abortionist Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), a passive-aggressive asshole who nonetheless understands the severity of the deed. Rendezvousing in a deadpan hotel, Bebe terrorises Otilia’s roommate with the sickly details of extracting a four month old foetus, how to dispose of it, and the ever-present danger of being caught. Propelled through a vacuum of institutional corridors and poorly lit walkways, Mungiu trades in the bellyaching anxiety and momentum of another Romanian triumph, The Death of Mr Lazaresu (also shot by Oleg Mutu), along with routing the Dardenne Brothers’ clenching formalism (namely, their Palm d’Or recipient, The Child). The shots though are held much longer and impose greater tension without the need for more artificial thriller conventions, while the cinemascope frame imprisons and isolates its characters through sterile space. Filmed with austerity and urgency, it’s as riveting as it is necessary; the irony of its final scene does not go unspoken.

Reviewed by Jacob Powell

WHAT DO YOU do when you realise you don’t really know the person you love? Or worse, when you have yet to truly open yourself up to that person? What will it cost to expose the all of who you are – the not so attractive fears and insecurities alongside the better bits? 2 Days in Paris sees writer/director Julie Delpy wax lyrical (and humorous) upon the complexities of cross-cultural couplings, and how people deal with their own neuroses in the context of relationships.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: bittersweet rain.

I MIGHT as well admit from the outset that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is one of my all-time favourite films. The main motif gets me every-time. That final scene is one of the most amazing bittersweet scenes in cinematic history. And it was an absolute pleasure seeing it on the big-screen for the first time, the colours and music even more vibrant than on a TV. Admittedly it’s not for all tastes, the fact the character sing “hello” and “thank you” to each other, may seem a little redundant – and for many, the all-singing, downbeat feel may take a bit of getting used to. But once you submit yourself to its pleasures – visually, aurally, emotionally – Demy’s film is one of the richest and most rewarding films ever made in my humble opinion.

Director of the astonishing Abouna, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s latest film Daratt (Dry Season) screens to audiences this March and April at the World Cinema Showcase. He shares his thoughts with ALEXANDER BISLEY.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a goddess of gamblers.

JEANNE MOREAU was already one of France’s most iconic actors by the time she made Bay of Angels (La Baie des Anges), given the roaring success of her earlier Louis Malle (Les Amants), Michelangelo Antonioni (La Notte) and François Truffaut (Jules et Jim) work. But there’s something about her performance as Jackie Demaistre in Bay of Angels that’s even more bewitching than her iconic roles – she burns the screen up with a rare type of intensity, creating a character, who despite throwing herself headlong into righteous self-destruction or the fact that she gambled away her three-year-old son, you find yourself a moth to her flame. She dominates so much, that the other lead, Claude Mann (as Jean Fournier) comes across as a simpering, highly melodramatic sad-sack, yet you understand his character collapsing in a heap around her. It’s lesser Demy perhaps, but it’s a dark, rich evocation of low-lifes and hopeless romantics.

Sarah Watt’s Look Both Ways – a delicate, melancholy debut exploring the lives (and deaths) of a cluster of interrelated characters in suburban Australia – scooped the AFI Awards in 2005, including Best Picture and Director. CATHERINE BISLEY caught up with Watt in Melbourne during preproduction of her forthcoming feature, My Year Without Sex.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Demy’s debut.

JACQUES DEMY films capture the bittersweet beauty of life so, so well. Even if he throws in purposefully ridiculous subplots, attacks ‘reality’ with gorgeous imagery, colours or music, or has narratives that contain considerable contrivances and coincidences. Lola was his first film, a box office failure when first released, but it contains many of the germs of his more successful work. That said, it’s a wonderful film in its own right, a moving tribute to the work of Ophuls and von Sternberg, and revelling in the carefree, cinematic atmosphere that spawned the Nouvelle Vague.

A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Severance, La Vie en Rose, Stephanie Daley, Michael Palin’s New Europe (DVD); Goodbye Bafana, Love in the Time of Cholera, Lady Chatterley, I Served the King of England.