Continuing on from my first weekend of NZIFF 2018 I had another five weeknight films -- mostly "dinner time" films, but also a couple of late nights (in the case of "Angels Wear White" it was the only screening in the festival).

Girl

"Girl" is a touching film about a young woman who aspires to be a professional dancer, and her challenges with becoming a woman, and training as a ballerina when "the other girls started training when they were 12". Lara, the young woman at the centre of the film, has one additional challenge -- she is trans, and has been on puberty blockers for a few years.

The film is fantastically constructed, and beautifully shot. It ends with one of the best final scenes in cinema -- an overlapping triple reflection in a double (or triple) glazed window. And then frustratingly has one more "throw away" scene. I am convinced the last "throw away" scene was added at the insistence of external parties who thought the final scene left the audiences too uncertain about what happened next. But the entire point of the final scene was that it was uncertain what happened next -- that is real life, and to me the entire point of the whole movie.

Victor Polster, playing Lara at the centre of the film, is very well cast, looks feminine from the beginning even while Lara does not believe she is a woman yet (and anxiously awaits surgery to help with that). They have an amazing career ahead of them if they choose to go further with acting.

I would highly recommend the movie if you are interested in coming of age movies, the trials of becoming a professional dancer, or gender issues.

Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable

Garry Winogrand is a famous, American, street photographer, working mostly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (he died relatively young -- in his mid 50s). He is perhaps best known for a "digital" volume of shooting in an analogue (film) era -- shooting 600+ rolls of film a year, and leaving thousands of rolls of film not even developed when he died (and many thousands more developed but either not contact printed or merely contact printed and not really looked at). Apparently he took around one million photographs in his lifetime, all on film.

The documentary is an interesting retrospective on his work, now some 35 years after his death. It mixes both interviews with present day photographs influenced by him, or his work, and also recordings (audio, 8mm, and speeches) from when Garry Winnogrand was alive. I particularly enjoyed the use of a conversation with Jay Maisel, another famous American photographer of a similar era, recorded by Jay Maisel while Garry Winogrand was at his peak.

While I knew a lot of the Garry Winogrand story, including through a NY MoMA-run online photography course, this movie helped place that story into the context of the development of American photography and photography as an art form. If you have any interest in the history of American photography, the history of street photography, or the development of photography as an art form in the 20th Century, I would recommend this documentary.

Angels Wear White

"Angels Wear White" is a very interesting film to have come out of China. It explores the nature of power in society, and the role of women -- and particularly girls -- in Chinese society (particularly since the One Child Policy was introduced). As much as the (important) content, it is also noteable that it was produced in China at all.

While the film is anchored around a single pivotal event in a relatively budget motel, it also manages to explore modern birth family dynamics, police and other corruption, the power of money, the relative lack of power of undocumented workers, gender politics, and the choices that young women -- and really young girls -- trying to survive on their own have to make. It is also notable for feeling like most of the central characters are women, or young girls, and the two key young female actors -- Vicky Chen / Wen Qi (as Mia) and Zhou Meijun (as Wen) are both excellent choices, and portray well developed characters. If anything the (few) male characters feel fairly two dimensional, and not that well developed -- which is rare in a movie, and sad that it is notable for a movie to have well developed female characters and just "background" male characters.

It is not a perfect movie by any means, but there is a lot in it to provoke further thought about gender politics, and social status, especially in China. Like "Rafiki" (from Kenya, that I saw over the weekend), I think the fact the movie tackles a topic rarely explored in cinema (at least reaching a Western audience) makes it even more important that it got made and released. Unfortunately the movie had only a single screening in Wellington, late at night, and presumably partly as a result was relatively thinly attended. Possibly it will see a larger audience via DVD/BluRay or online streaming.

Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible

"Jill Bilcock" is an Australian film editor who has seemingly worked on most of the Australian or Australian connected movies in the last 30 years! Film editing is one of those "behind the scenes" trades that define the look and feel of a movie, often without anyone even knowing it has happened -- let alone, knowing who is responsible for the work. Jill Bilcock is responsible for the look of (the modern) "Moulin Rouge!", the modern "Romeo + Juliet", "Strictly Ballroom" and many others.

The film is both an excellent tour of the high points of Jill Bilcock's work, and also in parallel a tour of many of the high points of the Australian cinema industry. It is organised pretty much chronologically through her career, so shows the influence of the early Swinburn Unversity film course from the 1960s onwards, and how that has (re)launched the Australian cinema industry.

In the mid-week evening screening I went to, the attendance was very light. But if you enjoy documentaries about creators, or are passionate about film editing and storytelling, the movie is a rewarding retrospective to watch.

Beirut

"Beirut" is one part "spy versus spy", one part "hostage negotiator" and one part thriller, set against old friendships, in a war torn Beirut, Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil war. It shows a situation where everyone has their own angle, and even those "on your side" may be only on your side for a specific moment or project and not necessarily to be trusted, with allegiences constantly changing. Sometimes those angles of others can be played towards your advantage, but it requires skillful thiking on the go -- and a keen "spy" awareness of the political contexts.

It is an exciting thriller to watch, and the "historical" colour treatment of the film is mostly not too distracting (except at the very beginning where the "sensor overload" green lines look both out of context for the period and also incorrect for the overcast scene -- the "sensor overload" actually only happens with concentrated direct light). I think Rosamund Pike as Sandy Crowder, is probably the stand out actor and character -- skillfully playing "the skirt" (ie, "just a woman") as a role, but later in the thriller becoming a pivotal person in the outcome of the movie.

If you like thrillers, especially those set in a historical context that may seem "familiar but unknown" -- the Beruit situation was on the news a lot when I was young, but was also "far away" and I was young enough not to really understand the details -- then you will probably enjoy this movie.