New Zealand International Film Festival

The New Zealand International Film Festival is a film festival held annually across New Zealand throughout the latter half of the year.

In 2009, for the first time, the Festival did away with its various regional names and pulled everything together under the banner of the New Zealand International Film Festival. Until then, each region had been promoted with the region’s name despite their having shared a common programme and artwork since 2002. The Festival has grown significantly since the merger in 1984 of the Auckland International Film Festival (founded in 1969) and the Wellington Film Festival (founded 1972). The Festival is operated by the New Zealand Film Festival Trust, a charitable trust established in 1996, and based in Wellington.

Auckland is the original home of the Film Festival. Founded in 1969 as a component of the Auckland Festival, the Auckland International Film Festival in time became a fund-raising event subsidising live arts. Rescued from this role by the intervention of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies in 1984, the Festival achieved an audience in excess of 100,000 for the first time in 2005. The year 2000 marked the Festival’s return to the refurbished Civic Theatre, a celebrated atmospheric theatre built in 1929.

The Wellington Film Festival was inaugurated by Lindsay Shelton and the Wellington Film Society with seven films in 1972. Thirty years later the Festival shows over 150 programmes to audiences in excess of 71,000. The Festival has a long tradition of supporting New Zealand filmmakers. The main venue is the Embassy Theatre. The Festival has played a major role in the theatre's rehabilitation and continuing refurbishment.

Founded in 1977, the Dunedin manifestation of the Festival presents a highlights package of approx seventy-five features – plus shorts – playing at the Regent Theatre

Founded along with the Dunedin event in 1977, the Christchurch Festival in the South Island's largest city presents substantially the same highlights programme. Christchurch is a city of avid moviegoers for whom this Festival functions as a popular showcase sample of the international Festival circuit.

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