News

Who would be likely, or, more often, extremely likely to recommend NZIFF to friends and family?  97% of respondents in Auckland, that’s who, along with 99% of those in Wellington; and 100% in Christchurch. Do it, please! In Dunedin, Hamilton and Timaru the percentage was 95% or more. The lowest: 82% in Tauranga. Definitely an ‘A’ for Excellent. Yay. That was the really good news. This year there was no really bad news to cloud it, but nobody’s saying we’ve attained perfection just yet.

Website & ticketing
There was abundant love for our website, thank you again, CactusLab. Ditto the improved ticketing facilities the site (and Vista ticketing) provided for NZIFF in Wellington. (The rocky first day on this system drew some understandable complaints, but after that, only joy.) Nothing would suit us better than comparable service, minus the teething problems, in other centres too, and we received numerous pleas for just that. We won’t list the other great website add-ons suggested by various respondents, just in case they turn out to be impossibly complicated, but you can be sure we’re working on them.

How you select films
Festivalgoers still rate the free printed programme highly. For the first time it

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The four winning shorts were announced at Auckland’s Civic Theatre on Saturday evening.

The Madman Entertainment Jury Prize for the Best New Zealand Short Film at NZIFF 2015 was awarded to The Tide Keeper, directed and written by Alyx Duncan. Congratulated in the jury’s citation for her singular personal vision and technical assurance, Alyx will take home a cash prize of $5,000.

The jury selected Michael Jonathan, director of the film Ow What!, for the Wallace Friends of the Civic Award for its originality and authenticity. The filmmaker receives a prize of $3,000 cash. 

A special jury of cinematographers selected Grant McKinnon, cinematographer for Not Like Her as the winner of the inaugural Allen Guilford Cinematography Award from the New Zealand Cinematographers Society (NZCS), a prize that includes a cash prize of $2,000. 

And the 2015 Audience Award, which will take home 25% of the box office takings from the screenings in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch, was awarded to Madam Black director Ivan Barge. 

The three judges were New Zealand producer Fiona Copland, Australian photographer and performer William Yang and representative for Madman Entertainment, Michael Eldred.

Guest selector and filmmaker Christine Jeffs selected the six finalists from a shortlist

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