Putting spectacular cinema classics onto spectacular cinema screens is one of the great pleasures of working at NZIFF. Every winter we relish the challenge of breaking out the new, but there’s something strangely refreshing about revitalising the tried and the true every autumn. For the third year our Autumn Events Classic Film screenings aim to provide the perfect supplement to the popular revival screenings at the annual mid-winter festival.
 
Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and two very different Kubrick epics – Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey – all come to us in freshly minted studio digital transfers, while new digital restorations give us the best possible reason to celebrate A Hard Day’s Night and Bertolucci’s ravishing The Conformist.
 
As the HD era continues apace, the choice of great films in digital formats expands. Films conceived to be projected on the grand scale are a priority for us – and no one ever accused Walt Disney, Bernardo Bertolucci or Stanley Kubrick of thinking small. We also love the sense of occasion that gathers around films best seen in a crowd: Beatlemania works so much better as a group activity. You don’t have to have been there the first time around to know that. In fact I’m a little envious of anyone encountering these films for the first time at these screenings: they will be looking astounding and sounding terrific.