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Film criticism, arts journalism, and digital documentaries by leading New Zealand writers and filmmakers

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The Lumière Reader


After 13 years of publishing in print and online, The Lumière Reader is taking a break.

For reasons both personal and financial, the site will cease publishing its regular mix of film criticism and arts journalism from March 31, 2016. Only the satellite site for video content and design services, video.lumiere.net.nz, will remain active as a platform for our core creative team to develop essay films and digital documentaries.

While we can’t say when or even if the site will come out of hibernation, we can assure readers it will remain online as a resource for as long as we can pay the bills. Rescuing eight years of publishing on our old site is another matter—broken and in disrepair, merging it with the current site can’t happen without financial assistance and a lot of elbow grease.

If preserving this legacy sounds worthwhile to you, or if you value the writing we’ve published and want to show your appreciation, donations are gratefully accepted via our PayPal account. (Thank you to those who’ve contributed to date—your generosity has already allowed us to partially rebuild the site.) This is the first time we’ve asked for help from the public, and even raising a small amount will go a long way towards future-proofing the website and building a better case for traditional arts funding of this and other projects.

From day one, The Lumière Reader has been a labour of love. In the beginning, it was established as a place for serious film criticism in New Zealand. Then it grew to encompass the wider arts scene, curating everything from essays, to long-form interviews, to poetry, to documentary filmmaking. More recently, it narrowed its focus to artists and practitioners, not merely through critique but also advocacy and conversation, particularly around collaboration, creative process, and what it takes to make art in this country. Through all of this, it remained ad-free and subsisted on the smell of an oily rag.

Under the volunteer model the site is run, it should have folded long ago—and yet it has endured since 2003 precisely because of its long roll call of contributors. We hope you’ll continue to follow these talented people elsewhere and appreciate their work as much as we have, whether they are writing for other publications or practicing as artists, novelists, poets, musicians, journalists, theatremakers, photographers, illustrators, and filmmakers. If you’d like to work with any of us, please get in touch.

And finally, thank you to the readers for sharing and supporting what we do. You’ve helped us achieve a longer innings than most, from a time when there was a paucity of arts and culture websites in New Zealand, to the present, where the local online publishing landscape is now livelier than ever.

The Editors,
The Lumière Reader

Special Publications

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The Lumière Reader presents
“Out of the Mist”

Two decades on from Cinema of Unease, Tim Wong’s ambitious essay film contemplates the prevailing image of a national cinema while privileging some of the images and image-makers displaced by the popular view of filmmaking in New Zealand.

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The Lumière Reader presents
“Paper Boat”

Alex Mitcalfe Wilson charts the journey a book follows when it is published today, telling a story of creativity and commitment through the words of those who carry a text through each step of that path: writers, editors, designers, printers, binders, booksellers, and librarians.

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The Lumière Reader presents
“Land of the Long White Stain”

Claire Duncan follows her musical comrades on a tour of New Zealand in this contemplative ode to a brood of genre-bending Auckland musicians, among them Girls Pissing on Girls Pissing, Seth Frightening, and Shab Orkestra.

against-efficiency

Against Efficiency and other texts

Summer Writing Resident Matilda Fraser responds to the question “is criticism still relevant?” with this suite of texts developed under Blue Oyster Art Project Space’s online publications initiative, with mentorship and publishing support from The Lumière Reader.

Original Artwork

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Collected film stills, photo essays, and illustrations commissioned by The Lumière Reader. View the Collection »

Editors’ Picks

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The Human Condition: An Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer

By Brannavan Gnanalingam

Ahead of The Look of Silence’s date at the Oscars for Best Documentary Feature, a conversation with filmmaker and human rights activist Joshua Oppenheimer.

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All Your Wants and Needs Overseas: An Interview with The PlayGround Collective

By Nathan Joe

Robin Kerr and Eli Kent on staging their show All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever internationally, creative practice, and theatre culture in New Zealand.

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“I feel like I was born for the Internet”

By Thomas Phillips

Mallory Ortberg, satirist and co-founder of The Toast, talks humour, femslash, and her conflicting soft spot for Ayn Rand ahead of New Zealand Festival Writers Week.

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From Soft Bomb to Silver Bullets

By Jihee Junn

Martin Phillipps on The Chills’ long-awaited new album, Silver Bullets.

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Houses and Homes:
Briar March on A Place to Call Home

By Doug Dillaman

Filmmaker Briar March talks about the creative and collaborative process behind her three-year project to document opposing housing projects in Glen Innes and Northland.

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A Slut for Beauty:
An Interview with Sarah Jane Barnett

By Joan Fleming

Inside Sarah Jane Barnett’s remarkable new book of poems, WORK.

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Anna Smaill on The Chimes

By Jihee Junn

On the eve of this year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist announcement, nominee Anna Smaill talks in-depth about her captivating debut novel, The Chimes.

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On Literary Pilgrimage

By Robert Metcalf

An account of living and writing in residence at Orlando’s Jack Kerouac House.

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Patricia Highsmith—Adaptations

By Tom Webb

A closer look at the screen iterations of Patricia Highsmith’s classic anti-hero, Tom Ripley.

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To describe with intense clarity

By Alexander Bisley

The Auckland Writers Festival refracted through a dialogue with Haruki Murakami interviewer John Freeman.

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“The music of being human”

By Saradha Koirala

Auckland Writers Festival guests David Mitchell, Morris Gleitzman, Tim Winton, and Carol Ann Duffy offer a salient reminder of how writing gives us hope.

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The Rituals of Reporoa:
The Ground We Won

By Doug Dillaman

A conversation about tackling rugby, male identity, and rural stoicism with filmmakers Christopher Pryor and Miriam Smith.

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Harun Farocki: Three films,
plus Beatriz’s War

By Brannavan Gnanalingam

Celebrating the late, great German media artist, critic, editor, and curator; plus, notes on East Timor’s first ever feature film.

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Interstellar: an introspection on fatherhood

By Mohamad Atif Slim

Christopher Nolan’s love for the mosaic and manifold takes a step back in his new film, an empathetic study of human emotions and relationships.

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The long, friendly shadow of My Neighbor Totoro

By Tim Wong

On the lineage and legacy of Hayao Miyazaki’s most enduring film. Plus, Isao Takahata and a new Studio Ghibli showcase.

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Power Structures:
Leviathan, Winter Sleep

By Jacob Powell

At the New Zealand International Film Festival: two imposing Cannes winners explore the struggle between family, state and religion.

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The Documentarian: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman

By Brannavan Gnanalingam

Cinema’s preeminent documentary filmmaker on his two latest triumphs, At Berkeley and National Gallery.

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FEMEN and Me:
An Interview with Kitty Green

By Laura Suzuki

The director of Ukraine is Not a Brothel on befriending the founders of the radical Feminist protest group, the dangerous ego of their former leader, and getting in touch with the Slavic soul.

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Documentary Realities:
Screen Edge Forum 2014

By Melinda Jackson

Talking China co-productions, our obsession with time, pop culture/zombies, fiction vs. reality, and the future of radio at the annual Screen Edge Forum.

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Conversations: The Tone of Things

By Lumiere Staff

DOUG DILLAMAN and TIM WONG talk Jake the movie, scriptwriting as a means to an end, collaboration vs. authorship, and finding the right tone.

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Reconsidering Funny Face:
An Illustrated Essay

By Tim Wong

On the fashionable/unfashionable style of Stanley Donen’s 1957 musical. Plus, a digression on Rouben Mamoulian’s neglected Silk Stockings.

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Simon Starling: In Speculum

By Thomasin Sleigh

The Turner Prize-winning conceptual artist discusses his practice ahead of a major survey of his work—one of the highlights of the New Zealand Festival.

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Check the Fine Print: What Exactly is The Wolf of Wall Street Selling?

By Laura Suzuki

Does the razzle-dazzle beauty of Martin Scorsese’s new film seduce in a way that obscures the horrors within?

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Vincent’s Hands

By Alexander Bisley

Vincent Ward, New Zealand auteur, reflects on a singular career in film, his creative instinct as an artist, and the exciting prospect of returning to directing after a long absence.

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A Correspondence
with Eleanor Catton

By Joan Fleming

Exquisite thoughts on writing and reading from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries.

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Condemned: Mental Health in African Countries in Crisis

By Andy Palmer

The exquisite and harrowing images behind New Zealander Robin Hammond’s W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund winning photojournalism.

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Five Up, The Comedian

By Alexander Bisley

Catching up with ex-pat Kiwi humourist John Clarke, who Barry ‘Dame Edna’ Humphries describes as “Australia’s greatest comedian.”

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I’m Your Woman:
A Conversation with Sylvie Simmons

By Alexander Bisley

One of rock‘n’roll’s great journalists on Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, and Bob Johnston.

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Exclusive: Masha Gessen Decides to Leave Russia

By Alexander Bisley

The brave author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin tells ALEXANDER BISLEY why she decided on Sunday to leave Russia.

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life

By Steve Garden

Revisiting Terrence Malick’s American odyssey.

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The Stuttering Conversation:
Art New Zealand in 2013

By Thomasin Sleigh

Art New Zealand opens its mouth and finds itself suddenly mute. THOMASIN SLEIGH thinks about art criticism in New Zealand.

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Minutes from ‘The Clock’

By Tim Wong

Notes on Christian Marclay’s staggering 24-hour video installation.

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Blonde and Blonder: The Cultural Legacy of Sweet Valley High

By Megan Dunn

Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley Confidential reunites readers with Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, covergirls of the ubiquitous Sweet Valley High romance novels. Now ten years older, are the twins and their stories any wiser?

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Park Kiyong on Moving

By Zhou Ting-Fung

A current visiting fellow at the University of Auckland, Korean filmmaker Park Kiyong sat down with ZHOU TING-FUNG (an editor on Moving) to discuss the conception and making of his documentary response to the Christchurch earthquakes.

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A speculative consideration of Lars von Trier and Antichrist

By Steve Garden

Baiting and repelling audiences in equal measure, Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is the most misunderstood film of the year.

Film criticism, arts journalism, and digital documentaries by leading New Zealand writers and filmmakers

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