“Alexander Greenhough and Elric Kane are enthusiastic about talking about film, but get them talking about their own work, and the words flow out like hyperactive children who’ve just found out they’re going to Disneyland for the first time. They love film, not only watching and analysing it... but they’re also starting to make a name for themselves as fine filmmakers in their own right in New Zealand. Kissy Kissy is the duo’s third film in the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals, and is arguably their finest achievement so far in their rather young career. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talked to Greenhough and Kane in a barely populated bar, and coupled with the dulcet tones of Rod Stewart swooping around the room, made for a highly energetic and lively interview.”...[Read More]

In further impressions from BRANNAVAN: “With an oddball title, and a premise that plays between fiction and reality, How is Your Fish Today? might be seen as a Chinese riff on Charlie Kaufmann, or could just as easily be tarred with that reductive label ‘quirky’. However, this would be to ignore the film’s thematic concerns and meditative mood, and ultimately its rather subversive streak.” And on his cemetery fetish: “I love going to cemeteries. There’s something majestic, something foolhardy, something particular vain about the human condition that gets represented in them. It’s an attempt to reverse the mutability of life with an ever-lasting monument. Dutch documentary maker Heddy Honigmann seems to share similar views... and wanders Père-Lachaise capturing moments of life and transcendence. It’s [Forever] a beautiful work that aims to show that by looking at death, we can also find traces of life.”

First thoughts from our Auckland Festival correspondent, DAVID LEVINSON: “In a bid to outdo the turbo-hormones and beersoaked euphoria of most male bonding, Falkenberg Farewell opts for a hippy forlornness that’s equally contrived (and a whole lot more cloying) than its more American counterpart.” And on Audience of One: “Herzogian song of thwarted ambition this is not... Nor, however, is it an hysterical left-wing grenade à la Jesus Camp or Deliver Us from Evil.” Having recently completed another tour-of-duty of Cannes, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN offers an appraisal of the cultural divide – and reconciliation – in Fatih Akin’s follow-up to Head-On: “The Edge of Heaven is often a string of sparse frames, shot with a refreshing economy of words. The picture’s near flawless performances add to its overall appeal.”