Wellington Film Society

16/06/2026

Another great turnout for 'Fallen Angels' on Monday (and thanks for bearing with us for our momentary silent movie screening at 6 p.m.!)

Wong Kar-Wai initially wanted to soundtrack his film with the trip-hop music that was popular in the mid-90s, but found that actually licensing the music of Massive Attack was too expensive. Instead, he used a number of soundalike pieces, and in particular, the Nogabe Randriaharimalala song 'Because I'm Cool', which sampled Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma'.

What did you think of 'Fallen Angels'? Rate and review the movie here: wellingtonfilms.nz/rate
If you're keeping track of the programme on Letterboxd, be sure to tag us in your reviews!

04/06/2026

It's been a true joy to be part of the Wellington cultural scene for the past eighty years, and we look forward to a great many more films in our future with you all. But we couldn't do any of this without Wellington itself, its enthusiastic people and its great institutions.
To celebrate, we decided to put on our weekend festival as a bonus programme for our members, at no extra cost.

In light of this, we're asking our members to come together and donate to Downtown Community Ministry (DCM), to help those in Wellington who need support the most. We think your generous gesture would be an honour to our history in this city, and the best birthday present we could ask for.

We've set up a fundraising campaign at this link, where you can choose to donate as a guest:

Fundraising for Downtown Community Ministry Wellington Charitable Trust (DCM)

04/06/2026

What better way to finish off our 80th birthday celebrations with an ode to movie-making and the flights of fancy it can portray? Federico Fellini's '8 1/2' rounds out our weekend programme at 6 p.m. this Sunday, 7 June.

Fellini's self-referential tendencies are at the forefront of this film - even the title is a reference to the fact that Fellini considered this the 'eight-and-a-half'th film he had made. To a great extent the plot of the film mirrors Fellini's difficulties in deciding what it would even be about. With only weeks to go before filming began, and having already booked locations and hired his actors and crew, Fellini had not even decided what the protagonist did for a living.

As was traditional for Fellini's work, almost all the dialogue was dubbed in after filming was complete. This meant that the script could still be a work-in-progress right up until the last minute. Fellini also shot a different ending for the film, one that retained some ambiguity, but which his friends and colleagues felt was too downbeat. Fellini opted instead for the 'alternate' ending on the beach that has become famous.

Reserved tickets to '8 1/2' have sold out, but we're making half the seats in the cinema available on a first-come, first-served basis! Come along with your full-year membership or three-film sampler and you'll be able to join hands with us as we celebrate eight decades of movie magic.

03/06/2026

Douglas Sirk, the much-loved champion of the 1950s melodrama, provides us with the second-to-last film of our little festival, 'Imitation of Life'. While this film covers many of the expected subjects - relationships between mothers and daughters; love found, lost, and rediscovered - Sirk also turns his attention to the simmering racial divide in America at the time. His films are always smooth and stylish, but 'Imitation of Life' more than any other shows the emotional turmoil that the characters would never dare show in public.

Sirk made some progressive moves in adapting the source novel, with Lana Turner's character Lora becoming successful by her own abilities (whereas in the novel she gains fame by commercialising her maid's waffle recipe). By moving Lora's ambitions to Broadway, rather than cookery, the film could also add luxurious outfits to Turner's wardrobe. Lora has 34 outfits in the film, and wears jewellery valued at over a million dollars.

Reserved tickets to 'Imitation of Life', at 3 pm this Sunday, 7 June, are still available, and we're also making half the seats in the cinema available on a first-come, first-served basis!
You can book your tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/imitation-of-life-wfs-film-fest-screening-members-only-booking

02/06/2026

The sixth of our eight long-weekend films is one for all ages - Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', at 10 a.m. this Sunday, 7 June. While away a Sunday morning with Anderson's trademark whimsy, now in stop-motion! We're opening this screening to the public as well, so anyone can book their seats now at the link below.

An expanded adaptation of the 1970 Roald Dahl novel, Anderson brought on his usual roster of actors - including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Willem Dafoe - but also introduced new and unexpected voices, such as Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. Anderson himself even provided the voice of Stan Weasel.
As is expected from a Wes Anderson film, the style is ostentatiously anachronistic, looking like the 1970s even though the film was actually set in the 2000s. Unusually for an animated film, much of the dialogue was not recorded in a studio, but rather in locations that mimicked the settings of each scene - a forest, an attic, a stable.

Tickets are still available for 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', and anyone can come along! Reserving a ticket gets you entry to our screening. All seating is open; we're not issuing tickets for any specific seats. You can book here (please ignore the unusual URL, it is correct!): https://events.humanitix.com/copy-of-the-lure-wfs-film-fest-screening-members-only-booking

02/06/2026

You could argue that we don't need any more reworkings of fairy tales... that is, unless you've seen 'The Lure', the Polish film that crowns the Saturday night of our 80th anniversary weekend! Deeply strange and weirdly uplifting, with a few splashes of gore to boot, it's likely to be a siren song to the fans of Ant Timpson's old 'Incredibly Strange' sub-programme. We're taking over the late-night slot at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday 6 June.

Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the film's director, drew on the horror movie's tradition of the monstrousness of adolescence when she enhanced the mermaid mythology for this tale. Like other monster films with young women as protagonists, such as the werewolf story 'Ginger Snaps' (John Fawcett, 2000), the female body is both seductive and destructive, but Smoczyńska elicits a feeling of feminist rage from her material. Add some classic Eastern European nightclub velour, and you've got an unforgettable musical.

Reserved tickets to 'The Lure' are still available, and we're also making half the seats in the cinema available on a first-come, first-served basis!
You can book your free passes here: https://events.humanitix.com/the-lure-wfs-film-fest-screening-members-only-booking