N.Z. film festival shows in Hong Kong

Press, 24 June 1986, Page 31

N.Z. film festival shows in Hong Kong

NZPA Staff Correspondent Hong Kong

The first New Zealand film festival in Hong Kong got under way with the local movie mogul, Sir Run Run Shaw, making a rare appearance at a cocktail party for the premier. Sir Run Run, head of Shaw Brothers Studios, seldom attended such functions, said Hong Kong film industry observers. Sam Pilsbury’s "The Quiet Earth,” which began the programme, was the only film to have secured a distribution agreement in Hong Kong.

But New Zealand Commission officials hoped that the film festival would expose the other 11 features to Hong Kong movie interests. The films, which included “Goodbye Pork Pie,” “Constance,” “The Silent One,” “Sons for the Return Home,” “Sylvia,”

“Smash Palace,” “Scarecrow,” “Came a Hot Friday,” “Mr Wrong,” “Other Halves” and "Vigil,” were being shown by a Hong Kong film society. A prominent critic, Mr Terry Boyce, in a halfpage review of the festival in the leading English language newspaper, said the films were evidence the New Zealand industry had taken off. “Whether it can stay airborne depends on a .number of factors, not least of which is the threat of removal of tax incentives for film-makers in New Zealand.” Because of the country’s isolation, the industry had taken some time to develop, he wrote.

But since 1977 — the Renaissance of New Zealand film-making — cinema had become the vanguard in the struggle for cultural independence, he said.

New Zealand offered an enormous variety of locations and a quality of light for which most European film-makers would give their right arm. Commenting on films in the programme, Mr Boyce described “Smash Palace,” voted one of the top 10 films of 1982 by the “New York Times,” as ‘“Kramer versus Kramer’ with balls.” “It should have done for the New Zealand film industry what ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ did for Australia,” he said. “That it did not is more a reflection of the poor taste of the rest of the world than on the film itself.”