We love to hear from WIFT members who are involved in any aspect of NZIFF - please feel free to contact us and tell us if you have a film you would like other members to support. We do rely on you keeping us informed and we really appreciate your emails. If you have a link to your film - please include it too - don't be shy!
We are delighted to announce that WIFT member Margot Francis, along with two other editors, Irena Dol and Cushla Dillon have their film A Flickering Truth, directed by Pietra Brettkelly, in the line up this year. Margot says it is a beautiful film about an historic film archive in Afghanistan.
This film was selected for Venice, Toronto and screened in the Sydney FF and is also is in the Melbourne Film Festival.
The film is screening on Thursday 21 July in Auckland at the Rialto. Watch out for its screening dates around the country.
Synopsis:
"Powerful� a ghost-mosaic" 4 out of 5 stars, Guardian newspaper
Film preservation is a challenge all over the world, but on this scale of crisis Afghanistan ranks near the very top. The miniboom in film production that followed the establishment of the state Afghan Film organization in 1965 came to an end with the ascension of the Taliban, which viewed cinema as Western culture that needed to be expunged. The country's film history might well have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the regime. In A Flickering Truth, we meet the dedicated cinephiles who are now excavating, preserving, and restoring thousands of hours of film footage, both drama and documentary, from Afghanistan's cinematic past.
The effort is led by Ibrahim Arify, who had been jailed for filmmaking under the Mujahedeen and fled the country to start a new life in Germany. Now, he has returned to rebuild Afghan Film and help bring a sense of order to a country where resources are scarce and needs are great. The heart of the organization is the elderly Uncle Isaaq Yousif, who was orphaned at age thirteen and has lived on the archive's premises for thirty-one years. Isaaq considers the archives to be his family, and now bears witness as ever more cinematic treasures are unearthed.
Director Pietra Brettkelly follows the archivists as they continue to struggle during the post-Taliban era, where suicide bombers continue to target anything with Western associations. As the caretakers thread old projectors with film from unmarked reels, the country's history comes alive with images of former leaders, beloved actresses, and landmarks that have since been destroyed. A Flickering Truth is a testament to the urgency and necessity of film preservation.