Excitement builds in the lead-up to the 2023 Whānau Mārama, NZIFF. There is something special about seeing a new film with an audience in one of the many impressive cinemas here in Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara. I’ve felt the same excitement watching the work of other filmmakers as I have seeing my own films in the festival.

I remember waiting outside the cinema in 2011, full of anxiety before the premier of my first feature documentary. Bill Gosden found me looking like a bundle of nerves and suggested we have lunch while the film screened. The chance to chat with Bill was enticing but, I explained, “I think I needed to see the film with an audience for the first time.” Bill agreed. We sat at the back of the cinema. I found myself entirely distracted by the audience and barely noticing the film. The attention of the audience on the screen was fascinating. Did they like it? Did it hold their attention? Did they understand it? For me the experience was a thrilling, terrifying, and humbling, 83 mins of adrenaline. Before I knew it, the lights came up as the credits rolled. I hadn’t seen much of the film and turned to Bill in shock. “I didn’t follow it, did the film make any sense at all?” He smiled and assured me it did.

In the years since I’ve had the privilege of showing three other films in the festival, and I never turn down the opportunity to watch with an audience. There is something compelling about a cinema full of people experiencing a film together. There is a truth there. The audience manifests that truth as a collective. Consciously or not, an audience actively engages in the construction of the film’s meaning. They bring the meaning and reality of their own lives into the auditorium to construct its significance and any truth that might be mined there.

This is what I came to understand in that first screening back in 2011. The flickering light from the projector throws only a scattering of memories and sounds. It is the lived experience, ideas, hopes, and dreams of the audiences that ultimate construct the film. As filmmakers we can only assemble the images and sounds, it’s the audience that brings life to these abstractions.

The experience of constructing meaning in a cinema with others around you makes these moments more powerful, visceral, and memorable. It’s in those shared public spaces that a film comes to life and an audience manifests its meaning. The opportunity to take part in the magic of those moments with an audience is an experience that I don’t think I will ever grow tired of.

View Paul's previous NZIFF features here.