The third New Zealand Film Festival will come to Beijing on July
7 with 12 films, including "River Queen" that won the Best Music
award of "Golden Goblet" in Shanghai Sunday.
The 12 films include five features, such as "The World's Fastest
Indian" which is about an old New Zealand motorcycle racing driver
who sets the land-speed world record, and "In My Father's Den" that
tells a story of a battle weary war photographer and his
16-year-old daughter.
"River Queen," directed by Vincent Ward and starring Samantha
Morton, is an intimate story set during the 1860s, in which a young
Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of
the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British
colonization of this island country.
The movie captured the Best Music award at the 9th Shanghai
International Film Festival Sunday evening, according to the
organizers.
There are also a documentary on New Zealand film, "Cinema of
Unease," and six short films, including "Two Cars, One Night" that
describes a tale of first love, and "Closer" which tells about a
deaf boy.
The festival, organized by the Chinese State Administration of
Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and New Zealand Film Commission,
is held in the wake of four successful Chinese Film Festivals in
New Zealand since 1998.
Following its debut in Shanghai, this film festival is now
underway in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, and will last four days in
Beijing.
"I hope the New Zealand Film Festival will further develop our
relationship, providing Chinese audiences with an insight into the
diversity and vitality of New Zealand culture and film-making," New
Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said in her congratulatory
letter.
(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2006)
