Back in the day, New Zealand had a little mini-International Film Festival that ran roughly every Easter, called the World Cinema Showcase.
Originally started independently by Richard Weatherly (someone here will correct me if I’m over-simplifying), it was eventually absorbed under the NZIFF wing and in 2013 became a much smaller “Autumn Events” programme before being disposed of completely in 2018.
As it happens, I previewed the 2009 edition of the Showcase on this very day and I was curious to see what I had recommended then and whether New Zealand subscribers would be able to see any of those recommendations today.
Well, friends, the news on that front is not good.
From Carlos Reygadas’ “Mexican masterpiece” Silent Light, Jean-Claude van Damme going gloriously meta in JCVD , Francis Ford Coppola’s wine-funded “potentially profound fable” Youth Without Youth, Charlie Kaufman’s Synechdoche, New York (featuring a barnstorming Philip Seymour Hoffman), the late Terence Davies’ portrait of Liverpool, Of Time and the City, or the music documentary Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, not a single one is available on a streamer or digital rental in Aotearoa.
Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, which introduced me to Tom Hiddleston, can be found on Mubi and Anne Hathaway in Jonathan Demme’s post-rehab drama Rachel Getting Married is a digital rental from Apple.
So much for the richness of the digital ‘long tail’.
This is the thing about streaming. You can always find something to watch, but you can very rarely find the actual thing you want to watch.
I suppose that’s why I’m here. To dig a little deeper into what is actually available and hope we can continue to confound the algorithm* somehow and bring you and good films together.
Pardon the long, frustrated digression then, and allow me to recommend the 2008 Cannes Palme d’Or (and 2009 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film), The Class in which novelist and teacher François Bégaudeau plays a lightly fictionalised version of himself as he attempts to wrangle a group of unruly inner-city teenagers in his French class.
As I put it:
“… probably not high on the list of Education Ministry recruitment materials (and yet any teachers watching will recognise and empathise with the heroic struggle on screen). A multi-cultural, urban school in Paris is the scene of a modern day competition for the hearts and minds of an alienated generation – vital and vivid.”
Where to watch The Class
Aotearoa: Digital rental from AroVision or Apple
Australia: Digital rental from Apple or Amazon
Canada: Digital rental from Apple, Amazon or Cineplex
USA: Digital rental from Apple, Amazon or Vudu
UK: Digital rental from Chile, Curzon or Amazon