Canterbury Film Society

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Taking you further into film every Monday night on the big screen, the way nature intended🎬

20/06/2026

Show Me Shorts
Turkish Short Film Night
Wed 24 June 6.10pm
Alice Cinema

19/06/2026

Beauty and terror in magnificent study of church-building priest - GODLAND (Hlynur Palmason, 2022, 143 mins) screens Monday 22 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

The struggle between the strictures of religion and humankind’s brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in this stunning psychological epic from director Hlynur Pálmason. In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness—one that’s attuned to both the majesty and the terrifying power of the natural world. - Criterion Collection.

16/06/2026

Stunning historical epic which recalls the grandeur and madness of Herzog at his best - GODLAND (Hlynur Palmason, 2022, 143 mins) screens Monday 22 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

Set in Iceland in the late 19th century, “Godland” follows Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), an ambitious but emotionally withdrawn Danish priest, as he tries to establish a Christian church in a characteristically remote part of Iceland. The forbidding climate and attendant desolation immediately get to Lucas, who’s guided to his as-yet-unfinished church by the gruff but curious area man Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurðsson). - Simon Abrams, Roger Ebert.

14/06/2026

It’s a trip through the Thin White Duke’s mind - MOONAGE DAYDREAM (Brett Morgen, 2022, 135 mins) screens tonight at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. This FREE event is open to the public.

There’s a great 1973 TV clip with the U.K. chat-show host Russell Harty, who seems disarmed by this guileless creature all dolled up on his couch. “What were you doing before you hit the bright headlights?” Harty asks. “Were you a nobody who suddenly thought, ‘Jesus, I must get into the scene by some other way?’” Bowie gives an innocent schoolboy smile. “I’ve never asked Jesus for a thing,” he says. “It was all my own initiative.” - Rolling Stone.

13/06/2026

A movie that wants you to get lost in it - MOONAGE DAYDREAM (Brett Morgen, 2022, 135 mins) screens Monday 15 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. This FREE event is open to the public.

Late in Brett Morgen’s riveting “Moonage Daydream,” David Bowie speaks of his belief that people are constantly taking fragments of the life around them to create their own existence—art, politics, family, etc. This fragmentation clearly influenced Bowie’s approach in not just music but how he moved through the world, and it’s also the operating model for Morgen’s film, a movie that defies the traditional “music bio-doc” structure by valuing experience over information. Bowie’s choices as a musician and icon often defied simple explanation, and so why make a movie that tries to do put him in an impossible box? - Brian Tallerico, Roger Ebert.

10/06/2026

A triumph of Sound And Vision - MOONAGE DAYDREAM (Brett Morgen, 2022, 135 mins) screens Monday 15 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. This FREE event is open to the public.

While David Bowie’s reputation as one of the greatest, most influential musicians of the 20th century remains unassailable, cynics might ask why we need another film about him. There have already been more than a dozen mostly made-for-TV documentaries profiling Brixton-born Bowie, as well as Gabriel Range’s misfiring 2020 biopic Stardust and Todd Haynes’ vivid, fictionalised version of Bowie and his glam-rock cohorts in Velvet Goldmine. Crucially, Range and Haynes weren’t allowed to use Bowie’s music. For Moonage Daydream, however, director Brett Morgen was granted unrestricted access to the Bowie catalogue and has made the most of this rare opportunity. - Empire Magazine.

09/06/2026

Spectacular documentary portrait of a great artist and extraordinary pop star - MOONAGE DAYDREAM (Brett Morgen, 2022, 135 mins) screens Monday 15 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. This FREE event is open to the public.

An ecstatic voyage through the creative and spiritual universe of David Bowie, Moonage Daydream is a fittingly unclassifiable tribute to the shape-shifting rock iconoclast and his singular sound and vision.

Exploding the conventions of the music documentary, director Brett Morgen remixes dazzling, never-before-seen footage of the artist throughout his career, reveling in his otherworldly presence while revealing the restless philosophical inquiry that guided his myriad metamorphoses. Graced with soulful narration by Bowie, this immersive audiovisual head rush transmits the essence of a phenomenon that cannot be explained—only experienced. - Criterion Collection.

07/06/2026

The first indisputable masterpiece of post-Stalin cinema - THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957, 91 mins) screens screens tonight at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

Kalatozov’s freewheeling camerawork, with its almost unhinged movements and impossibly wide-angle lenses, creates an almost dreamlike atmosphere. It’s as if the very screen itself were at the mercy of the characters’ feelings — swaying and shaking with each shout, each heaved breath, each impassioned lunge. – Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice.

02/06/2026

The first film of the Soviet ‘thaw' - THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957, 91 mins) screens Monday 8 June at 7.30pm at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

This landmark film by the virtuosic Mikhail Kalatozov was heralded as a revelation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the international cinema community alike. It tells the story of Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) and Boris (Alexei Batalov), a couple who are blissfully in love until World War II tears them apart. With Boris at the front, Veronica must try to ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of her beau’s draft-dodging cousin. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, The Cranes Are Flying is a superbly crafted drama with impassioned performances and viscerally emotional, gravity-defying cinematography by Kalatozov’s regular collaborator Sergei Urusevsky. - Criterion Collection.

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Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū
Christchurch

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https://www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz/

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