A brand-new Coromandel-centric film festival is blossoming this spring in Whitianga.
The CoroCine Film Festival is the first event in the coromandel artbeat spring festival, which will pull together a series of creative events mapped out across the peninsula.
The CoroCine Film Festival will for the first time bring together Coromandel films and filmmakers in an exciting programme over three days, in a collaboration between Creative Coromandel and Twin Cinemas Whitianga. CoroCine will also kick off the coromandel artbeat spring festival, a three-month online programme of creative events.
The CoroCine Film Festival will take place from September 6 – 8 at the Twin Cinemas in Whitianga. Anne-Maree McDougall, who owns the cinema with her husband Matt, has been a key driver in pulling the festival together.
As well as celebrating local film, the festival aims to be a catalyst for people to start making their own films, and to inspire those who have always wanted to make a film to see that there is a local venue keen to screen what they have made to an audience.
The impressive programme includes international award-winning filmmakers James Muir (Mauri o te Kauri), Amy Taylor (Milked) and Kirsty Griffin and Viv Kernick (The House of Champions) alongside emerging filmmakers and a collection of short films. The festival will kick off on September 6 with a screening of Anton Steele’s The Z Nail Gang, which is based on real events that happened in Kūaotunu when a group of locals fought back against an international mining company with plans to dig an open cast gold mine in the area. Daniel Leo Max’s documentary Baring Our Souls tells the story of a local Tairua man healing himself through art, a topic that reflects the themes and genesis of the festival itself which celebrates art as a way to bring people together.
Earlier this year, Anne-Maree offered the use of the cinema to Ian Preece, a local photographer who was putting together a film of his night photography.
When both showings of the final version of Ian’s film Starry Starry Night sold out, the seed for CoroCine was planted as Anne-Maree realised what an appetite there was to see local films by local filmmakers on the big screen.
CoroCine is supported by Creative Coromandel – He Mana Toi Moehau, a charitable trust that champions the area’s arts, artists and creative industries.
The inaugural CoroCine Film Festival will kick off another Creative Coromandel venture – the coromandel artbeat spring festival, which celebrates the beating pulse of the abundance of art and artists all around this rohe.
The coromandel artbeat spring festival will bring together and promote a diverse range of artists and creatives. From the CoroCine Film Festival to experimental community music events, and from the Steampunk Festival in Thames to a chemistry course for making pottery glazes, there will be something to inspire and interest everyone. The festival is free for any creatives to register an event and will give everyone a chance to the meet the fascinating artists that live in the Coromandel Hauraki rohe.
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