GISBORNE FILM GROUP ACTIVITIES : SUCCESSFUL YEAR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23092, 3 November 1949, Page 4

GISBORNE FILM GROUP ACTIVITIES : SUCCESSFUL YEAR

The first season, now drawing to a close, of the Gisborne Film Group, a branch of the New Zealand Film Institute, has been a very successful one, members having been afforded an opportunity of seeing various screen classics which were not of sufficient popular appeal to warrant their screening in the commercial theatres.

Films screened during the season include “The Battle of San Pietro,’’ one of the best films made during the war years, and regarded by experts as the most nearly perfect of the combat documentaries; “Matisse,” a French film giving fascinating glimpses of the great French artist, Matisse, at work; “Berlin” one of the best known of the early Documentary films, showing a day in the life of the German capital before Hitler came to power; “The Italian Straw Hat,” one of the half-dozen outstanding comedies in the history of the cinema- ‘ Kameradschaft,” one of the outstanding German .achievements of the earlysound period, dealing with a mining disaster in a French coal mine on the Franco-German frontier; “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” a magnificent French film detailing the physical and mental torment of Joan before the Ecclesiastical Courts—one of the most uncompromising pieces of cinema ever made; Le Tonnelier” (The Cooper), another fine French film; “The Earth Sings,” a Czechoslovakian film—a delightful record of Slovakian folk-songs, games and dances.

In addition to the above feature films there haye been various documentary shorts,” both British and foreign.

Modern Russian Film

„ Through the courtesy of the Soviet negation, Wellington, the Film Group will screen during this month the outstanding Russian colour fantasy “The Stone Flower” which won for the Russians the first prize for colour at the ?nP„ ne £, International Film Festival of 1946. This fine cinematic work, which has been screened privately in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, has been described by overseas film critics as one of the greatest films of ali time.

The Stone Flower” was to have been screened next Sunday evening, but the Russian Legation has advised that the fiirn will not be available for Gisborne until later in the month. The screening has therefore, been postponed to a date which will be advertised. For its final two programmes of this year the Film Group will present a special programme of Czech films, made available by the Czecho-Slovak Consu-late-General of Sydney, including a .record of the Second International Music Festival in Prague, and “Mor V a v) a Franch record of the grimness of life on the islands of the Breton archipelago. It is also possible that will be a screening of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” one of the greatest liims produced in pre-war Germany—its technical interest lies in its attempt t 0 Present, through settings of formal ana distorted design, a conception of reaiity seen through a madman’s eyes.