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Thursday, 25 March 2010
6pm The Band’s Visit
This beautifully composed, delightfully understated Israeli film is at Elsewhere not because it is about music—an Egyptian police band adrift in an unattractive town in Israel—but because it is about silence.
There is an ineffable sadness behind the thin veneer of wry humour and the astute observation of characters and gestures, and that is conveyed not through words but passages of eloquent silence which hang heavy with meaning.
While there is some strange chemistry between two of the characters—Sasson Gabai as the band’s leader, Ronit Elkabetz as an Israeli shop owner who accommodates them—it is the lack of connections made in The Band’s Visit which elevates it above being a minor comedy. It is a breath away from being tragic in fact.
The barely stated subtext about relations between Egypt and Israel sits quietly behind the story, as does the soulless and arid town in which the small drama is played out. As Elkabetz’s character Dina notes, this is a town without culture, and the artfully lit, generously spaced images of empty roads, the neon-soaked diner, concrete park and more reenforce the emotional and social barrenness.
The plot is remarkably simple—a police band from Alexandria ends up in the wrong town and is obliged to stay the night—but it is the cast of characters who slowly reveal themselves, and the relationships between them, which is at the heart here.
The unfinished concerto that one band member plays is listened to in silence by two Israeli men and you are uncertain whether they feel its sadness or just sympathy for the character who has abandoned it.
The Band’s Visit probably bears little relation to how matters might be between ordinary people in Israel and Egypt, but their common ground is the deep well of disappointment which seems to inhabit everyone here.
Yet for all the slow melancholy this is not a sad film. Every character also has strength and you sense that the lack of hope and promise perhaps stems from the dreams deferred and denied but not abandoned altogether. Better to have dreamed than not.
A multiple award winner at many film festivals, The Band’s Visit a debut feature by television director Kolirin will linger long after the final, moving, lyrical and unexpected song has faded.
8pm Land of the Long White Cloud
Film maker Florian Habicht gets up close and personal with the surf-casters on Ninety Mile Beach in his latest celebration of life in the Far North. Land of the Long White Cloud premieres on Saturday July 25 at the New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland.
Habicht describes his latest expose of the recreational habits of Northlanders as a ‘sequel of sorts’ to his classic Kaikohe Demolition.
Claimed to be the largest surfcasting event in the world, the annual Ninety Mile Beach Red Snapper Classic attracts hundreds of anglers for five days every February to compete for prizes in excess of $250,000, with the biggest snapper taking out a serious $50,000.
Habicht joins them, camera in hand, full of questions about what they might be thinking as they engage in this elemental and apparently very relaxing pursuit. How will they spend the prize money? Do they believe in an afterlife?
Habicht relishes the individual flavour of every frank response. There are interludes of boisterous carousing, grueling scenes of snapper Passion, and long and lovely shots of the long and lovely beach. The amiable atmosphere of tolerance and unpretentious philosophising is so salty and true and rousing that you could bottle it, call it Kiwiade, and sell it by the crateload to homesick expatriates. — NZ International Film Festival Director Bill Gosden
Capitaine Bougainville Theatre
Forum North
Rust Ave
Whangarei
Price / Entry fees:
members $10, non-members $12
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