Reel Life: Get Offside for A Good Cause

8:25 Jan 28, 2011 4

This weekend, Wellywood readers can support a good cause, and see a great movie while they're doing it. Hobbit-gate sucked up all the film-related outrage last year, but here's why you should know who Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi is -- and care that he's been imprisoned and banned from making films for twenty years.

There will be a screening of Panahi's film Offside at Wellington's Paramount Theatre THIS SUNDAY AT 6.15pm. Speakers will include Amnesty NZ, film-maker Faramarz Beheshti, whose Salaam Rugby premiered at the 2010 Festival, and, for the Festival, Bill Gosden. Admission is free but koha is requested to cover theatre rental costs.

4 responses to this post

Lilith __, 11:50 Jan 28, 2011

Offside is an awesome film! Heartily recommend it to all those in Welly.

Dunedin • Since Jul 2010 • 3895 posts Report
Craig Young, 12:58 Jan 28, 2011

Iran's regime is utterly vile and I fully intend to support its liberal contingent's battle for media freedom and against censorship.
Meanwhile, however, Ugandan LGBT rights activist David Kato has just been murdered after winning a court battle against the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone, which had published the names of numerous LGBT Ugandans. For the last few years, Yoweri Museveni's corrupt regime has been trying to pass legislation that would institute the death penalty for repeated acts of lesbian and gay sex- National Resistance Movement David Bahati's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill".
Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the European Union have all condemned this. It's time that all of us took action against Uganda's regime and forced them to abandon its homophobic extremism and drop this murderous legislation.
Craig Young

Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 573 posts Report
Simon Chamberlain, in reply to Lilith __, 23:17 Jan 31, 2011

It is indeed a fine film. Jafar Panahi visited Wellington (and other venues I guess) to promote it during the Film Festival a few years ago. He seemed like a decent man as well as being a very talented film-maker, and I'd encourage anyone in Welli to go see it and support him.

London • Since Aug 2007 • 33 posts Report
Kumara Republic, 17:35 Feb 6, 2011

And still on film, the Paramount is showing an encore screening of Inside Job. Basically reinforces what we've suspected already - and exposes other stuff that we didn't know about. The sense of denial on the guilty parties' faces was self-explanatory, and as far as they're concerned, crime pays if you have a big fat chequebook.
And if it swayed the likes of Bernard Hickey...

The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report