Simon Zhou previews the New Directions section at the 2010 NZ International Film Festival. See more previews here.

Simon Zhou previews the New Directions section at the 2010 NZ International Film Festival. See more previews here.

First and second-time directors.  The dreamer in me hopes for the next Andrea Arnold; the realist in me fears the next Richard Kelly. 

In a digital age which has removed most of the technical boundaries from the process of film-making, how does a film-maker distinguish him or herself from the millions of other Wes Anderson fanboys with handicams making their distinctly quirky, possibly pretentious personal expressions of art babble? 

I would suggest that the answer is a competence in the language of cinema to express something sincere, original and unique, but perhaps it is better for me to  pass over to my learned colleague, Mr. Orson Welles, who knows about this sort of thing:  “A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet”.  I would add to Mr. Welles assertion, that it also doesn’t hurt to have Gregg Toland, Emmaneul Lubezki, or Christopher Doyle as your cinematographer.

Lebanon (dir. Sameul Maoz), Alamar (dir. Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio), Ajami (dir. Scandar Copti/Yaron Shani), The Double Hour (dir. Giuseppe Capotondi), I Killed My Mother (dir. Xavier Dolan), Undertow (dir. Javier Fuentes-Leon) and Winter’s Bone (dir. Debra Granik) have all won prizes at major international film festivals, but the film I’m most excited about in this section is Father of My Children (dir. Mia Hansen-Love) because of Kenneth Turan’s assessment in the LA Times that the characters are ‘so finely calibrated and accurately portrayed that we forget they are not truly real’. 

Also in this section are three ‘Homegrown’ short film programs, showcasing New Zealand directors.