The Open Broken
The Open Broken
A torch and a light (cover)
A torch and a light (cover)
G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– )
G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– )

Screened as part of NZIFF 2015

Place Unmaking 

Aotearoa

New Zealand artists are often called upon to engage in ‘place-making’ projects. These 11 works find contemporary cracks and crevices in the heroic landscape tradition.

Jul 21

Academy Cinemas

Jul 22

Academy Cinemas

96 minutes

Q+A with Mark Williams and filmmakers at the Tuesday screening. Mark will introduce the films at the Wednesday screening.


Contemporary New Zealand film and video artists are often called on to engage in ‘place-making’ in public art projects and landscape film programmes. Yet moving image artists also play a role in ‘un-making’ place by interrogating or reinventing our heroic landscape tradition. This programme traces the promise of the post-war boosterism of government newsreels; the end of the neighbourly dream of state housing; urban beaches constructed from the soil of motorways; the bicultural politics of air; a taonga collection in Dusky Sound. New Zealand filmmakers also negotiate landscapes of the Americas – in Andrew Denton’s film of the escalating pine beetle epidemics that have decimated forests on the West Coast of the USA; and in Phil Dadson’s film shot in the isolated gorge in the Valle de Luna region of the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. These artists both document and construct imaginative, post-natural landscapes where social and bio-physical ecologies are captured in intimate performances of the camera. — JR & MW


Curated by Janine Randerson and Mark Williams. Presented by CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand – circuit.org.nz

G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– ) 2015

Director

An evicted house in Glen Innes in 2015 becomes the screen for a 1940s film promoting state housing.

Seawater and Dust 2014

The condemned Old Mangere bridge and the construction of an artificial beach on the Manukau harbour documented on 40-year-old film stock.

Cascade Cove in the shadow of 150,000 bones 2015

Formerly Tamatea Dusky

Director

A storm brews on an unusual boat expedition through Dusky Sound.

EYE I AYE 2015

Director

Now in their 40s, Dida and Erana have lived on the streets in Manurewa since they were ten years old.

I would rather be the worst at something than the best 2015

Director

A lone figure walks a barren embankment strewn with the traces of consumption and waste.

Aspects of Trees 2015

Director

A eulogy to the lost mountain forests of North America caused by the pine beetle infestation.