The Open Broken
The Open Broken
A torch and a light (cover)
A torch and a light (cover)
G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– )
G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– )

Screened as part of NZIFF 2015

Place Unmaking 

New Zealand artists are often called upon to engage in ‘place-making’ projects. These 11 works find contemporary cracks and crevices in the heroic landscape tradition.

96 minutes

Contemporary New Zealand film and video artists are often called on to engage in ‘place-making’ in public art projects and landscape film programmes. Yet moving image artists also play a role in ‘un-making’ place by interrogating or reinventing our heroic landscape tradition. This programme traces the promise of the post-war boosterism of government newsreels; the end of the neighbourly dream of state housing; urban beaches constructed from the soil of motorways; the bicultural politics of air; a taonga collection in Dusky Sound. New Zealand filmmakers also negotiate landscapes of the Americas – in Andrew Denton’s film of the escalating pine beetle epidemics that have decimated forests on the West Coast of the USA; and in Phil Dadson’s film shot in the isolated gorge in the Valle de Luna region of the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. These artists both document and construct imaginative, post-natural landscapes where social and bio-physical ecologies are captured in intimate performances of the camera. — JR & MW


Curated by Janine Randerson and Mark Williams. Presented by CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand – circuit.org.nz

G.I. Area A & B: Housing in New Zealand (1946– ) 2015

Director

An evicted house in Glen Innes in 2015 becomes the screen for a 1940s film promoting state housing.

Seawater and Dust 2014

The condemned Old Mangere bridge and the construction of an artificial beach on the Manukau harbour documented on 40-year-old film stock.

Cascade Cove in the shadow of 150,000 bones 2015

Formerly Tamatea Dusky

Director

A storm brews on an unusual boat expedition through Dusky Sound.

EYE I AYE 2015

Director

Now in their 40s, Dida and Erana have lived on the streets in Manurewa since they were ten years old.

I would rather be the worst at something than the best 2015

Director

A lone figure walks a barren embankment strewn with the traces of consumption and waste.

Aspects of Trees 2015

Director

A eulogy to the lost mountain forests of North America caused by the pine beetle infestation.