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I am contacting you regarding the 2006 Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals.
We have many fantastic environmental friendly documentaries (info blurbs below) that will be featured in the festival later this winter (Auckland July 13-30, Wellington July 21 ? August 6, Dunedin July 28 ? August 13, Christchurch August 3-20, Palmerston North August 10-27, Hamilton August 17 ? September 3). We are really thrilled to have these films as part of our programme and would greatly appreciate your support in helping us telling your network about them in advance.

Black Gold
UK 2006, 77 Minutes
With: Tadesse Meskela, Dr Ernesto Illy
In English, Ethiopian and Italian, with English subtitles
Festivals: Sundance 2006

Black Gold is a persuasive and sobering investigation of the world coffee trade, from the hype and glitz of the World Barista Championships to the Ethiopian farmers who grow the world?s finest coffee beans yet live in near starvation. Since 1990, there has been an explosion in demand for coffee, to the point where globally, more than two billion cups of coffee are drunk each day. Over the same period, thanks to the fierce coffee commodities market and a collapse of international agreements governing the coffee trade, the price paid to farmers has fallen to a 30-year low. A comprehensive and beautifully shot account of the trade, Black Gold centres on the travails of Tadesse Meskela, who represents a co-operative of more than 70,000 Ethiopian farmers. Meanwhile, brokers for such coffee giants as Nestl? and Kraft ? in tandem with the coffee commodity exchanges in New York and London, where daily prices are set ? work to keep prices down and profits up. Coffee prices have fallen so far in Ethiopia (said to be the birthplace of coffee) that many families who have grown coffee for centuries are turning instead to more lucrative narcotic crops.
?As these hard-working people strive to keep the rich cultural heritage of their country intact by continuing to harvest some of the highest-quality coffee beans available, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find a fair price for the fruits of their labour. This seemingly Sisyphean endeavour takes him on an international journey to some of the biggest coffee marketplaces in the world, where he discovers that there are no easy solutions for the trade issues facing his impoverished countrymen.? ? Adam Montgomery, Sundance Film Festival
?As coffee drinkers know, not all beans are equal, but the meaning of inequality gets an entirely different spin in Marc and Nick Francis? handsome and astute documentary.? ? Robert Koehler, Variety
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com <http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/>

Departure and Return
New Zealand 2006, 65 Minutes
With: Susi Newborn, Anna Horne, Peggy Finlay, Margaret Mills, Bunny McDiarmid, Jane Cooper, Hanne Sorensen, Hilari Anderson
Twenty years on, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior is commemorated at Matauri Bay. Claudia Pond Eyley frames her history of the ship with the ceremony and relates the story through the testimony of women associated with its campaigns ? against whaling in the North Atlantic, against the dumping of nuclear waste in the Bay of Biscay and against nuclear testing in the Pacific. If their tales of courage and principle have a glow of romance about them ? for several of them adventure on the high seas clearly came with true love attached ? their recollections are bracingly without nostalgia. Remembering the evacuation of the Marshall Islanders from their radioactive atoll, Hanne Sorenson quails at the gravity of the offence against humanity as though the wound were inflicted afresh in the recollection. Likewise, Jane Cooper shakes her head in disbelief that the saboteuse Christine Marchand was her housemate. The evidence that these women have not been deflected from their ideals makes this remembrance of the French outrage an uncommonly calm and hopeful one.

An Inconvenient Truth
USA 2006, 95 Minutes
With: Al Gore
Festivals: Sundance, Cannes (Out of Competition) 2006
In a landmark year for hard-hitting activist cinema, this brilliantly straightforward ? and devastating ? film on global warming stands out as exceptionally well-honed and persuasive. It also signals the return of Al Gore, who has been far from idle in the years since the 2000 US presidential election was awarded to George W. Bush. Gore has devoted his time to delivering a multimedia slide show on the imminence of catastrophic global warming wherever he can find an audience. And this film is simply the best means possible to get that show to a wider audience. One thing?s certain: Gore will do more good for his country and the world with this movie than Bush ever did by beating him.
?You will see the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps melting. You will see Greenland oozing into the sea. You will see the atmosphere polluted with greenhouse gases that block heat from escaping. You will see photos from space of what the ice caps looked like once and what they look like now and, in animation, you will see how high the oceans might rise? I promise, you will be captivated, and then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket.? ? Richard Cohen, Washington Post
?What Gore strives to make crystal clear to anyone in opposition is that the tools and methods to reverse these calamitous changes are at hand ? no new inventions required ? and that the economic consequences of tackling the problem are positive rather than negative. The idea that responsible environmental protection is bad for the economy is exposed here through facts and science for what it is ? a Big Lie.? ? Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
http://www.climatecrisis.net

OilCrash – A Crude Awakening
Switzerland 2006, 85 Minutes
?That sucking sound you hear is the last significant oil reserves being drawn from the earth. The very oil that makes our bloated, consumptive Western lifestyles possible is directly forcing our economic, industrial and environmental demise. In this well-constructed barrage of terrifying information and images, filmmakers Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack and Reto Caduff chisel away at our denial of imminent global oil collapse. Energy experts and oil industry authorities? detail just how close to the bottom of the barrel we are. The world?s supply has peaked, and the age of cheap and plentiful oil is over? With equal parts reason and fear, this highly energetic expos? vividly illustrates our fossil fuel addiction and perhaps even more harrowingly, reveals how little we seem to care.? ? Myrocia Watamaniuk, Hot Docs
?A terrific work of investigative journalism-as-film? I sat breathless through the final minutes of the documentary OilCrash, maybe the ultimate feel-bad apocalyptic film ever made.? ? Andrew O?Hehir, salon.com

http://www.oilcrashmovie.com

Our Daily Bread
Unser T?glich Brot
Austria 2005, 92 Minutes
?Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming!? announce the filmmakers in their promotional material for Our Daily Bread. It?s appropriate to feel nonplussed by that cheerful exclamation mark. Without a single line of commentary, they leave us to make what we will of the awesome machinery of mass food production. From their meticulous sound design, and 35mm cinematography so pristine you can practically see your reflection in the stainless-steel abattoir walls, it?s clear that they can?t be totally opposed to technology per se. Then there are the surreal portraits of docile factory workers ? one guy spends all day collecting semen from rutting bulls; another woman sits chewing gum, her expression serene, while snipping the trotters off an endless queue of slaughtered pigs. The film is at once an ode to the staggering efficiency of modern harvesting and an overwhelming substantiation of Western gluttony. This is what it takes to feed rich and fattened Europe, with its boundless appetite for bacon and tomatoes, prime eye fillet steak and olives.
http://www.ourdailybread.at

Time & Tide
USA 2005, 59 Minutes
In English and Tuvaluan, with English subtitles
Filmmakers Julie Bayer and Josh Salzman offer a thought-provoking visit to the land and people of the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu, threatened with possible extinction by the twin oppressions of global warming and economic globalisation. The film follows a group of Tuvaluan New Zealanders returning to their homeland, many for the first time in decades, and others, the children of immigrants, for the first time ever. The voyage to Funafuti is full of nostalgia, but they soon discover that Tuvalu has changed a lot since they left it behind. A multi-million dollar deal with an internet company has brought new development, altering the landscape and bringing foreigners to the island. But a greater threat looms from the steadily rising sea level, driven by climate change resulting from global warming, swallowing up preciously limited land. In An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore talks about the Pacific Islanders fleeing their flooded atolls for New Zealand. In Time & Tide we meet them.

The White Planet
La plan?te blanche
France/Canada 2006, 86 Minutes
Narrator: Jean-Louis Etienne
In French with English subtitles
If 2006 is the year of the anti-global-warming documentary, then The White Planet?s contribution is to remind us of the spectacle of the natural world that still surrounds us. Tracing the Arctic seasons and the myriad of creatures that inhabit its vast ice-covered wilderness, the subtext of that spectacle is a powerful one: enjoy the show while it lasts. And what a show it is. The riches on offer range in scale from the intimate to the epic: a polar bear cradling her cubs inside an ice cave; huge herds of reindeer migrating across the tundra, as tiny and vulnerable as a trail of ants. But unlike certain recent documentaries which focus on cuter aspects of polar life, The White Planet is not afraid to bare its fangs. The same polar bear seen cuddling her cubs in an earlier scene is later shown snatching a young seal from inside its snowy refuge and feeding it to her young. An extraordinary documentary, which will stimulate young and old alike ? including those jaded souls among us who occasionally need reminding of nature?s magnificence.

Who Killed the Electric Car?
USA 2005, 92 Minutes
Narrator: Martin Sheen
With: Chelsea Sexton, Peter Horton, Paul Scott, Alan C. Lloyd, S. David Freeman, Dave Barthmuss, John R. Dabels, Wally E. Rippel, Stanford Ovshinsky, Alexandra Paul, Colette Divine, J. Karen Thomas, Mel Gibson, Ralph Nader
Festivals: Sundance, Tribeca, San Francisco 2006
Fashioned as a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery, complete with funeral and celebrity victims, this disarmingly entertaining documentary looks at the optimistic rise and equally swift demise of the electric car in mid-90s California. Sleek, compact and fast enough to appeal to celebrity boy racers, the prototype EV-1 electric car was developed by General Motors to comply with California?s 1990 Zero Emissions Mandate, before being leased out to famous bods du jour, such as Mel Gibson, Alexandra Paul and Peter Horton, who all fell in love with their sexy and efficient, environmentally sound cars. For a brief moment it looked like the EV-1 was the vehicle the future had been waiting for. So why did it end up on the scrap heap? By the end of the decade, the sole remaining EV-1 was nothing more than a novelty item in the basement of a California motor museum. Whodunit is the question this documentary attempts to answer. As in all good murder conspiracies, the suspects ? General Motors, oil companies, the US government and consumers ? all end up with blood on their hands. A quick-witted documentary about a deadly serious subject, Who Killed the Electric Car? is a timely reminder that we have the technology to save the world, if only that were the aim of those in charge.
?Who Killed the Electric Car? is a potent examination of what happens in the corridors of power and what those who hold the purse strings will do in the interest of maintaining the status quo. All we can hope for at this point is that someday the electric car will make a comeback.? ? Nancy Shafer, Tribeca Film Festival
http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com

Venue details, dates and sessions are still to be confirmed but will be available in the festival brochure and online at http://www.nzff.telecom.co.nz <http://www.nzff.telecom.co.nz/> from the end of June.

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