Telecom 34th Wellington Film Festival

Friday 5th August 2005

High attendances at the Telecom 34th Wellington Film Festival

Attendance at this year’s Telecom 34th Wellington Film Festival totalled 72315. “Though admissions did not exceed last year’s all-time record of 73184, they came amazingly close and far surpassed our expectations,” said Festival director Bill Gosden.

“It’s extremely gratifying that Wellingtonians responded so positively and made nonsense of our earlier fears that this year’s programme might be too sombre to connect with such a sizeable audience.”

The most seen film on the programme was Howl’s Moving Castle, with Michael Haneke’s much debated Hidden in the runner-up position. Other popular hits were the German activist drama The Edukators, the Tour de France documentary Hell on Wheels and the Bill Murray comedy Broken Flowers.

While most evening and weekend sessions were well attended, the Festival observed a decline in attendance at the lower-priced weekday daytime sessions.

Mr Gosden would like to pay special tribute to Telecom for its sponsorship, which has enabled the Festival to bring a record number of filmmakers to Wellington.

Movie-goers have also embraced Telecom’s T3G Video Clips service as a means of previewing Festival films. Telecom customers with video capable phones have streamed a shortlist of Film Festival movie trailers more than 16,000 times since the Festivals first opened. The Festival continues in Dunedin and Christchurch and opens this weekend in Palmerston North.

The Festival then travels to 12 other centres: Palmerston North (August 4 – 21), Hamilton (August 11 – 28), Napier (August 17 - September 4), Tauranga (August 25 - September 7), New Plymouth (September 1 -14), Nelson (September 8 – 21), Masterton (October 12 – 26), Queenstown (October 27 - November 9), Levin (November 3 – 16), Gisborne (November 10 – 23), Whangarei (November 17 – 30). And this year for the first time the Film Festival will visit Greymouth (September 30 – October 2).

The 2005 website www.nzff.telecom.co.nz awaits your visit.

ENDS

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