The drama Snowtown is based on grisly and grim real life events and is inspired by 2 books Killing for Pleasure, and The Snowtown Murders. In the late 1990’s John Bunting, along with three others, tortured and murdered twelve people and then stored their bodies in barrels in a bank vault in the small rural town of Snowtown.

The film tells the story from the point of view of one of Buntings accomplices, 18-year-old Jamie Vlassakis who was seduced by Bunting into becoming a killer.

For his debut feature film, Australian director Justin Kurzel not only chose a controversial subject, he also worked with mostly non-actors, people discovered from around the Adelaide suburb where Bunting lived. It’s an impressive, intense debut and is held together by a remarkable performance by Daniel Henshall as John Bunting, one of the only three professional actors in the film.  

This year, Justin Kurzel and Daniel Henshall visited Auckland as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival to talk about their film and we sat down and had a chat.

Well, it’s been a big week for the New Zealand Film Industry. First, Hobbit fanatics and the world media came to Wellywood, or Hobbiton, or whatever we call ourselves these days, to celebrate the release of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.

The media did their best to find a negative story about the film, and just when you’d expect the studio would be wanting rave reviews to override the annoying distractions they placed restrictions on anyone actually talking about the film. Ah, Hollywood.

Once the hullaballoo about a hobbit and a bunch of dwarfs died down, it was time for the industry to get together at the inaugural Sorta Unofficial New Zealand Film Awards, held at The Civic’s Wintergarden on Tuesday evening. 

First up this week is a film for lovers of the Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg; Howl (Saturday 8^th December, 8.30pm). This experimental docu-drama explores Ginsberg’s erotic, explicit and autobiographical poem Howl (released in 1956) and brings his prophetic masterpiece to life with psychedelic animations of the poem.

Men Like Us is a moving and revealing documentary that looks into the lives of nine gay New Zealand men aged 24 through 78, directed by Christopher Banks. The film was released into theatres in August and has its television premiere on Rialto Channel as part of our Boys On Film series. 

As Christopher tells us, Men Like Us was made for gay men, a demographic over-represented in depression and suicide statistics, as a mirror of their own experiences. That said, Men Like Us is a rewarding and enlightening documentary regardless of your sexuality.

Christopher Banks now lives in Melbourne, and was kind enough to have a chat to us about his feature-length documentary.

Top of this week’s picks is the incredible story of how a group of ordinary people who were infected with the AIDS virus, or somehow affected by it, became health activists in a desperate bid to slow down the AIDS epidemic in New York City during the 1980s and 90s. 

Well, I have to say, Rialto Channel’s timing couldn’t be more perfect. Just after George Lucas announces he’s selling his company Lucasfilm Ltd to Disney for around US4 billion, Rialto’s playing the hilarious documentary The People vs George Lucas (Friday 16^th November, 8.30pm).