Students taking art to the street

JO RICHARDS

Students from Golden Bay High School (GBHS) are exhibiting their work “on the street”.

A mural created by a group of five young artists in the school’s Red House is currently on display outside Tākaka’s Art Vault gallery, in its “Sitting on the Fence” spot.

GBHS’s three other houses – Yellow, Blue, and Green – also produced murals as part of the multi-activity inter-house competition that runs throughout the year.

The entries were judged by the Art Vault’s Grant Knowles and Hahna Read, who selected the Red House mural by Amalie Harris-Macready (Year 12), Hester Davies (Year 13), Jack Holland (Year 12), Summer Dixon (Year 11), and Phoebe Mulry-Climpson (Year 13), as the winner.

Elvira van der Waay, the school’s arts co-ordinator, explained the wider purpose of the challenge. “The aim is for students to network with other year levels, and for senior students to mentor younger students throughout the school that they would not normally have great contact with,” she said, before adding specific details about the artwork. “The mural competition this year was based on the school’s value of Whanaungatanga, which means to include others in a community, value their strengths and individuality.”

Grant and Hahna offered to display the murals at their gallery on Commercial Street because they were of such a high standard. Each of the works will be “sat on the fence” for a month at a time.

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Review: Driving Madeleine

Screening Schedule - June to July

Fri 9 4:00 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (PG) FINAL

7:30 Polite Society (M) FINAL

Sat 10 2:00 RAINY DAY ONLY MATINEE

7:30 Driving Madeleine (M) (subtitles)

Paris is a remarkably beautiful city that makes no apology for its seedier, grimier corners, which naturally adds to its charm. Driving Madeleine also captures this alchemy, as we traverse the French capital – and the highs and lows of a 92-year-old woman’s life – during an unforgettable taxi journey.

Charles (Dany Boon) is a man weighed down by disappointment, unable to enjoy his family life as financial strife means longer and longer days driving his taxi.

“Every year I drive 120,000km,” he bitterly confesses. “That’s three circumnavigations of the globe. And I don’t have one memory to hang onto, because I’ve never been out of France.”

The customer he opens up to is Madeleine (Line Renaud), a fiercely independent and still glamorous woman in her nineties, who has reluctantly hired Charles to take her to a retirement home on the other side of the city. A fall has meant that she can no longer live alone, but Madeleine is certainly no invalid – with an extremely sharp mind and wit, and a joy for life that has kept her looking far younger than her years.

As she persuades Charles to make detours to visit significant places from her past, she begins to tell him about her life.

What transpires is an absorbing and sometimes heartbreaking trip through the social upheaval of the latter half of the twentieth century, and Madeleine’s surprising role in some of that change. Charles might be driving, but he becomes as much a passenger as the audience, swept along by the unfolding story.

Madeleine’s encounter with her first love, an American GI who dances with her at a ball held in an aircraft hangar during WWII, is gorgeously filmed in muted flame-lit tones. This contrasts starkly with the dingier apartment-bound scenes of her ensuing abusive marriage and the darker path her life takes. “The 1950s were not an easy time for women,” she tells Charles, as she gradually opens his eyes to how much the world has evolved.

Driving Madeleine is no dry history lesson, it is genuinely enchanting and funny, although seasoned with tragedy as any life story will be. The transformation of Charles is equally engrossing, his gruff and uncaring outer shell gradually dissolving under Madeleine’s charm offensive. Her well-worn but still effective wiles are put to particularly good use when the distracted Charles accidentally runs a red light and is pulled over, in serious danger of exceeding his demerit points and losing his job.

The film very much depends on the charisma of our two leads and their chemistry together, and they deliver in spades until, like Madeleine, we don’t want to reach the final destination.

Despite increasingly frantic messages from the retirement home, the day stretches into night and culminates in dinner at a fine restaurant, which Charles insists on paying for. The grand old lady thrives in this setting and after they finally part company, we know that their story together is not quite over.

This beautiful film is highly recommended; a moving connection made across two very different generations, with fascinating history and a travelogue thrown in for good measure. Book yourself this taxi ride-definitely-worth-taking, tomorrow evening at 7.30pm.

Today at 4.30pm is your last chance to see the ingeniously computer-animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Does our increasingly superhero-weary world need another Spider-Man film, you ask? Well, that same world has resoundingly answered “yes”, with the best opening weekend so far this season, and top rating international reviews. A glorious riot of colour, movement, and sound, anchored as always by the relatable characterisation of this most fallibly human of costumed heroes, and his many friends and foes.

Sunday afternoon brings the final opportunity to see the fascinating documentary Jos, about Czech-born photographer Jos Divis, and his efforts to keep the West Coast ghost town of Waiuta alive through his work, dubbed the “first selfies”.

Fri

Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny

7:30 Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny

Sat 1 3:00 GB Community Light Festival (Koha) 7:30 AllShorts Film Festival (M) ENCORE

Sun 2 4:00 NT Live: Much Ado About Nothing (PG) $25/$20

7:30 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (M) FINAL

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THIS PROGRAMME:

SHACKLETON ENCORE: 4.30 By popular demand we are encoring Shackleton: The Greatest Story of Survival, so if you missed it, this will be your last chance to see it! Book online to avoid missing out. SUN

COMMUNITY ARTS

LIGHT FESTIVAL: 3PM Come along to this community event with music, projections, spoken word, circus, comedy and dance. Will continue onto the Junction Green at 5.30. Koha entry.

Movie Descriptions

SHACKLETON: THE GREATEST STORY OF SURVIVAL (PG) 1hr30m

Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance must fight for their lives after their only lifeline is destroyed in the most uninhabitable place on Earth – Antarctica. True story of the adventurers.

MET OPERA: LOHENGRIN (Wagner) (PG) 5hrs 15min

Lohengrin returns to the Met stage after an absence of 17 years with this atmospheric new staging by François Girard. Cast led by tenor Piotr Beczała in the title role of the mysterious swan knight.

FAST X (M) Action 2hr20m

Vin Diesel and the fam face off against Jason Momoa in this 10th movie. Over many missions, Dom Toretto and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path.

Harold is an ordinary man who has passed through life, living on the side lines, until he goes to post a letter one day...and just keeps walking. Adapted from the novel by Rachel Joyce.

INDIANA JONES & THE DIAL OF DESTINY (TBC) 2hr30m

Harrison Ford returns as the immortal cinema icon, this time with James Mangold behind the camera and Steven Spielberg (director of the first four films) producing along with George Lucas.

ALLSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL ENCORE: 7.30

If you missed the AllShorts red carpet event, we have selected some of the best/favourite short films for an encore screening. Last chance to see them!

ALLSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL (M) 1hr30m

An Encore of some of the best/ favourite short films from the festival. Films from around the world with something for everyone with music, docos, dramas, comedy, fantasy, adventure, animation + more.

NT LIVE: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (PG) 2hr50m

From the National Theatre of London, this will be shown on cinema screens as a live recording direct from the London stage, in Shakespeare’s rom-com of sun, sea, and mistaken identity.

THE FLASH (M) Action/Adventure/Fantasy 2hr30m

Worlds collide in The Flash when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past.

ELEMENTAL (PG) Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy 1hr40m

This fantastical adventure from Pixar follows Ember and Wade in a city where fire, water, land and air residents live together.

BANK OF DAVE (M) Comedy/Romance/True Story 1hr50m

The true story of how Dave Fishwick, a working class man and self-made millionaire, fought to set up a community bank so that he could help the local businesses of Burnley not only survive, but thrive.