BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Wong Kar-wai style.

WONG KAR-WAI makes films that are so sexy, you kinda forget his are all about thwarted love, the failure of communication, and the end of the world. In time to come, his films may end up being the visual representation of the 1990s, a decade which may go down as one of the most transformative decades politically, socially, and technologically in human history. Wong’s films are all about the senses, and of time passing, and his hit-man thriller/romance Fallen Angels fits in nicely with the feel of Wong’s best work.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round three of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

IT’S ALMOST misleading to call Sergei Parajanov’s extraordinary film a Soviet one. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more political statement made in the history of cinema, and given the personal consequences on Parajanov, let alone the film’s political intent, the film is as anti-Soviet as you can get. But then The Colour of Pomegranates couldn’t have been made anywhere but in the Soviet Union, where Parajanov channelled unashamedly nationalistic and Christian motifs in direct opposition to those championed by the Soviet authorities. In other words, this film couldn’t have been made without the repressive conditions Parajanov was screaming against. The film’s almost sealed Armenian nationalism has led to its marginalisation by film critics however. As it requires an intimate knowledge of its subjects, any reviewer not in-tune with the symbolic significance of its tableaux cannot do much beyond give a loose overview of its themes or talk about its aesthetic qualities – but that shouldn’t put off viewers. It’s undeniably one of the greatest films ever made.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM chats to Stephanie Cook, subject of a new documentary by Vanguard Films’ Russell Campbell.

FOLLOWING on immediately from the Vanguard Films retrospective at the Film Archive, Sisters from Siberia is the latest addition to the Kiwi collective’s stable. Directed by distinguished documentary-maker and academic Russell Campbell, the touching documentary follows Wellington City Councillor Stephanie Cook and her quest to adopt two girls (Katya and Nadya, aged nine and four respectively) from Siberia. The documentary moves to look at the two girls’ struggles/triumphs in trying to adapt to New Zealand life. Campbell frequently digresses from the main narrative, and adds interviews with former Russian citizens – and reveals the diversity, energy and colourful nature of the vibrant Russian community in the city. The documentary has its world premiere on Sunday September 20 at the Paramount Theatre in Wellington.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round three of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

AGNÈS VARDA’s good friend and co-film revolutionary Chris Marker once made one of the most astonishing pieces of cinema with La Jetée – a film composed of static, two-dimensional photographs (bar one moment in the film). The photographs replicated memory, because for Marker our memories are only played back to us in 2-D. These images are inherently unreliable, but they are the best we’ve got. This treatment of the static image appears to be the philosophical underpinning of the three wonderful short films which closed the Film Society’s Varda programme.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM argues for the transgressive comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Brüno’.

I AM CONVINCED that if Brüno (and Borat) hadn’t crossed over to mainstream multiplexes, it would have been proclaimed an avant-garde masterpiece. Perhaps this will occur in twenty or so years time. The film isn’t even notable for its comedy (and by the way, it is rip-roaringly funny). It’s the intellectual rigour with which Sacha Baron Cohen uses his creations to confront bigotry and intolerance. Creator Cohen is essentially carrying on a tradition created by the likes of the Marquis De Sade, Georges Bataille, and the Situationists. Or you could point to a film tradition of John Waters, Russ Meyer, the Cinema of Transgression movement, Catherine Breillat, Baise-Moi etc. By challenging society over what it considers offensive or disgusting, these artists have examined the construction of taboos and the repressive nature of particular societal norms. Whereas Borat wrapped this exploration up in the cuddly, roguish titular character, Brüno pushes the boundaries even further by directly confronting the audience’s expectations with the character’s shenanigans. And the film is being given warnings all over the show by reviewers for its apparent offensiveness – a clear statement which merely confirms what Cohen is in fact challenging.

ALEXANDER BISLEY reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Kim Ki-duk’s four seasons.

SIMPLE in its means yet cosmic in its scope, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is transcendent. The lovely film, seasonally structured, meditates on a cute child’s way to nirvana, instructed by a wise old Buddhist monk. They live on a floating temple in the middle of an isolated, bucolic lake. As with his wrenching The Isle, Kim Ki-duk’s visual rhythms are innovative and beautifully hypnotic.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round two of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

THE FILM SOCIETY’s jaunt through the rarely seen but blazingly important world of Agnes Varda continues with a collection of her ‘Parisian’ short films. While many in this collection are not as idiosyncratically endearing as some of her best work (though, there is of course her adoration of cats), there are some brilliant and philosophically rigorous moments throughout.