Bill Gosden Tribute

Bill Gosden

Tribute

This special screening – a wallto-wall Technicolour classic – pays tribute to the late Bill Gosden, ONZM (1953–2020), NZIFF’s director and public face for nearly 40 years.

Many of Bill’s favourite films feature in The Gosden Years, a book conceived by Bill during the last months of his life on the festival’s storied history, its major role in Aotearoa film culture and the artists and personnel who were a part of his remarkable run at the helm. The book is being released during NZIFF 2021.

Bill’s love of early cinema, vibrant studio-era musicals, and frankly anything starring Elvis could be felt throughout his retrospective programming, not least in the carefully curated Live Cinema events he looked forward to most. Douglas Sirk, Hollywood’s unrivalled melodramatist, influenced some of Bill’s absolute favourites – Fassbinder and Almodóvar, most famously – and this presentation of one of the director’s late masterpieces is a fitting occasion to luxuriate in largerthan-life filmmaking on the biggest screen available, as only Bill would have it.

Douglas Sirk’s Texas-sized melodrama, made at the twilight of Hollywood’s fabled studio system, might just be the ultimate soap opera: the stuff of Dallas and Dynasty decades before, mounted on an expressionistic scale with star power and lusty chemistry to burn. Beefcakes by name and reputation, Robert Stack and Rock Hudson are duelling best friends entangled in the riches of an oil empire and the desires – both adulterous and incestuous – of their women, played by Lauren Bacall and, most unforgettable of all, Dorothy Malone as a raging nymphomaniac. These characters only have tragedy ahead of them; their collision course contrived in a manner that’s trashy to the core, yet also scathingly satirical. At the peak of his mastery, Sirk lets the haute bourgeois tale of vanity and self-destruction take off, all the while steeping even the smallest moments in the deepest irony. Heaving with symbolism and intention in its precise use of colour, décor and framing, everything means something in this visual explosion of a film, at once excessive and brutally exact in its picture of the American dream.

Image: Michael Jeong

The Gosden Years

Non-fiction $50.00 Edited by Gaylene Preston & Tim Wong Foreword by Tim Wong Available to order at nziff.co.nz

The Gosden Years is a record of Bill Gosden’s enormous legacy as director of NZIFF. Conceived by Gosden during the last months of his life, the book comprises his curated film notes, with praise for vital and overlooked New Zealand feature films included; programme introductions that illuminate the changing technologies and politics of film exhibition through the decades; and striking original poster art from every year of his tenure.

Written on the Wind

“[Sirk’s] vision of the selfconsuming whirlwind is anchored by a still and unshakeable philosophical center… Yet that very elusiveness of originary inspiration is itself part of Sirk’s ironic genius.”

Image: Michael Jeong Director: Douglas Sirk USA 1956 | 99 mins

Cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith Producer: Albert Zugsmith Screenplay: George Zuckerman Based on the novel by Robert Wilder Cinematography: Russell Metty Editor: Russell F. Schoengarth Music: Frank Skinner Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Dorothy Malone), Academy Awards 1956 Festivals: Auckland, Wellington 1999

Screenings

SUT Fri 19 Nov, 11.30 am SUT Sun 21 Nov, 11.15 am