On Thursday night I went along to the opening of the New Zealand Film Festival at Auckland’s Civic Theatre. For those who don’t know The Civic Theatre is a large heritage theatre seating over two thousand people in central Auckland, New Zealand. First opened on 20 December 1929, it was reopened in 2000 after a major renovation and conservation effort (yep, got that bit from Wiki). Seeing a film in a large olden style hall is something I haven’t done since I was a teenager, and being spoilt these days with hi-tech audiovisual complexes and home theatres, I was curious to see how the acoustics and and visuals would hold up. Little did I know that the visual and audio onslaught of Beasts of the Southern Wild would be just the film to test it.  This was going to be something special.

Read my review of Beasts of the Southern Wild  here.