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films

A Flickering Truth, films |

June 21, 2016

| by PBK

A Flickering Truth

About ‘A Flickering Truth’ Andrew Pulver, from The Guardian says:

Here is an outstanding film from the New Zealand director Pietra Brettkelly that starts off slowly, but builds into a revelatory document about Afghanistan and its current travails. Its unlikely vehicle is the attempt to restore and rescue the Afghan film archive in Kabul, trashed by the Taliban in a religiously inspired frenzy. Afghan film-maker Ibrahim Arify, living in Germany, returns to take command of the project, exhibiting visible frustration at the backwoods ways of his compatriots’ – both the finagling day labourers and the ingenuous Isaaq, the aged caretaker who lives in the office.

To see this film at the NZ Film Festival check here

“Following the approach of the great documentary maker Frederick Wiseman (In Jackson Heights), Brettkelly’s crystal-clear images are unaccompanied by title cards, talking heads or, perhaps most ambitiously, voiceover, so the viewer is flung into the world of the film and forced to be part of the action. The very real physical threat of the world depicted becomes all too apparent, heightening the importance and urgency of the work Arify is undertaking. Film preservation has never looked so important or so current. — TW”

In A Flickering Truth, we meet the dedicated cinephiles who are now excavating, preserving, and restoring thousands of hours of film footage, both drama and documentary, from Afghanistan’s cinematic past. New Zealand wide release for ‘A Flickering Truth’ is August 25th.

 

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A Flickering Truth, films |

August 22, 2012

| by PBK

NEW ZEALAND FILM FESTIVAL

nzff2012Have loved being at the q and a of my film screening as part of the NZ Film Festival. Tauranga and Hawkes Bay coming up.

And also sending off funding applications for my next film tentatively titled FLICKERING TIME BOMB, that I’ll start filming in October in Afghanistan. Very exciting.

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films, Maoriboygenius |

June 10, 2012

| by PBK

Sydney Film Festival over… Sheffield Doc/Fest here I come

SFFSheffield-DF-logo Just had two sold-out screenings of Maori Boy Genius at Sydney Film Festival. And a standing ovation. Humbling business.

Wore a great gold frock my mum had made me which gave me strength, though I could see her in the audience watching me nervously as I played equally nervously with threads that were hanging down….

Now off to Sheffield Doc/Fest and then onwards to Afghanistan to begin my next film, OASIS.

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films, Maoriboygenius |

February 15, 2012

| by PBK

Variety Reviews Māori Boy Genius

Variety Reviews Māori Boy Genius:

What if some shrewd filmmaker had recognized Barack Obama’s boyhood promise and documented the birth of his political consciousness as a teen? In “Maori Boy Genius,” documaker Pietra Brettkelly (“The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins”) may well be profiling New Zealand’s future prime minister.

Despite the hyperbolic title, subtitled “Volume One,” the low-key pic is an inspiring look at the education and training of charismatic, articulate 16-year-old Ngaa Rauuira Pumanawawhiti, pegged since birth as a future leader. A smart choice for broadcasters and fests, “Genius” should have a healthy shelf life in educational ancillary.

Read the Variety review

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artstar, films |

November 19, 2010

| by PBK

Film: The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins

Art-Star-2“A Stunning Film” NOW Magazine

“A brutally honest, remarkably self-critical reflection on foreign adoption.” LA Times

Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary the art star and the sudanese twins follows popstar of the art world Vanessa Beecroft’s intentions to Sudanese adopt orphaned twins.

But as New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch states, with Vanessa there is no boundary between life and art.

Alongside the adoption process she photographs herself breast-feeding the twins, provocative work at $50,000 a print.

The film exposes Vanessa’s creative process, her struggle with depression, her volatile relationship with her husband and her love of the twins.  Like Angelina and Madonna, Vanessa is a white westerner intent on ‘rescuing’ third world babies.  But at what cost to her personal life?

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films |

November 19, 2010

| by PBK

THE RESCUE OF IANI I and II

returnofianiThe Rescue of Iani documents a landmark case that shocked even the adoption authorities in Romania..

When as a 10 month-old orphan Iani scuttled in his cot after volunteer nurse Alana, she never imagined that six years later Romanians would be claiming she’d stolen the child.

Ordered by Romanian authorities to return the six year old, Alana and Iani are ripped from a life in clean, green New Zealand to former Soviet block Romania, caught for the next two years in a bureaucratic nightmare.

Iani had become a New Zealand schoolboy who only spoke English. But authorities threatened to take him from the only family he’s known, Alana, and return him to an orphanage.

Any chance of adoption is gone with the cancellation of international adoptions by a Romania desperate to become part of the European Union, and its answer to a call to deal to child trafficking.

Filmed over a heart-wrenching two years, this two part documentary reveals the extraordinary story of one woman’s battle to keep the Romanian orphan who stole her heart.

One of hundreds of thousands left in Romanian orphanages over the last decades, Iani’s birth parents reappear to halt the process not once but five times.

It is then revealed Iani is one of at least nine children left by the parents. They want US$100. But Alana is adamant she will not ‘purchase’ the child she has put her life on hold for since she was 22.

You may buy the video Rescue of Iani (Parts 1 & 2) over on our store page.

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