Local Grant injects life into Film Festival in Christchurch

The Canterbury Community Trust is providing a lifeline for the NZ International Film Festival this year with a $10,000 grant announced.

The local grant is a first for the Festival after 33 years of screening to Christchurch audiences and comes at a crucial time for the event.

“We are most appreciative of the Canterbury Community Trust grant. The Festival in Christchurch has faced a very particular set of challenges since the multiplexing of the formerly twinned Regent Theatre in 1995,” says Festival Director Bill Gosden.

“The limited capacity of the existing venues reduces the opportunity to capitalize on our most successful films. A grand cinema venue is a key ingredient to the much higher level of success the Festival enjoys in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. This new injection of local funding could not have come at a better time.”

Financial pressure on the Festival has been exacerbated by the shrinkage of national sponsorship and by a serious downturn in Christchurch patronage in the last two years, while patronage in the other three main centres remained consistently strong. In 2009 the Festival moves to a single venue, Hoyts’ Regent on Worcester. Gosden welcomed Hoyts’ support in order to maintain the event in the city.

“Hoyts have recognised the difficulties we face and have agreed to shoulder an increased share of the financial risk in order to maintain the Festival in the city. In the current difficult financial climate a partner who would share the risk was the essential encouragement we needed to stay.”

“Without the support of a significant new sponsor a decline in attendance this year would probably spell the end of the struggle for us in Christchurch. With bookings to date currently well ahead of target in the other main centres we hope to see a remarkable year in Christchurch as well. The programme we’re announcing is a superb one, replete with many of the year’s most remarkable and talked-about films. “ says Gosden.

The Festival opens on July 30 with Sundance and Berlin hit, An Education, adapted from Lynn Barber’s memoir by Nick Hornby. It closes on August 16 with Pedro Almodovar’s latest Broken Embraces, fresh from screening in competition this year at Cannes.

The Christchurch programme is announced tonight and is now available online.

ENDS

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