Festival of plenty

Arthouse greats, Kiwis and Cannes are on the NZIFF roll

- RUSSELL BAILLI

It's a question to ponder, perhaps, as you finish your ice-cream, wait for the lights to go down and the curtain to come up: in the 50-year-plus history of the New Zealand International Film Festival and its forerunners, which directors - foreign and domestic - have had the most films?

It springs to mind when looking through the programme for this year's festival, which spreads across the country in July. It's full of works by arthouse perennials such as Wim Wenders (who has two this year: Japan-set drama Perfect Days and artist documentary Anselm 3D), the king of Finnish deadpan Aki Kaurismäki (Fallen Leaves, this year's closing-night film) and American stylist Todd Haynes (May December, starring Julianne Moore as the survivor of a tabloid scandal, and Natalie Portman as the actress about to play her in a movie).

Wenders' films have been playing at New Zealand festivals since at least 1988 with Wings of Desire. That's according to The Gosden Years, the festival memoir of the event's late director Bill Gosden.

It's possible Wenders' 1970s works turned up earlier than that. Haynes goes back to his 1989 debut Karen Carpenter documentary Superstar, while only a dive into the festival's programme archive would say which Kaurismäki film first brought his Scandinavian drollery here. Best guess? Leningrad Cowboys Go America from 1989.

Locally, this year's screening of a digital restoration of Bread and Roses possibly answers the question about the most appearances by a New Zealand director.

The 1993 biopic of Sonja Davies is by Gaylene Preston, who surely must be in contention as the Kiwi film-maker with the most features in the festival since arriving with 1985's Mr Wrong.