Once again the New Zealand International Film Festival is rolling through Tauranga - let's have a look at what's on offer.

This year, for whatever reason, the entire event is taking place at the Rialto Cinema, and kudos to the team there, they are showing a full slate of 39 movies.
And, as usual for Tauranga, a number of the more extreme and controversial films have failed to make it; Lars Von Trier's bizarro horror provocation The Antichrist is nowhere to be seen, but there are still gems a-plenty, including three very worthwhile music documentaries and a slew of award winners from around the world.
The festival started last night, but since it runs until 9 September there's still plenty of time to grab tickets and check out some gems that may never pass this way again.
Let's start with the music docos:
The first, Soul Power, is rather unusual in that it is a sequel of sorts; to a boxing movie. Back in the mid 90s the best boxing documentary I've ever seen came out; a film focused on Muhammad Ali and his famous 1974 ‘Rumble in the Jungle' fight with George Foreman. It was called When We Were Kings (available on DVD) and also contained tantalising footage of a vast three day music festival intended to bring American blues, soul, and funk ‘back to Africa'. It was a cross-cultural event featuring both top American and African artists, including James Brown, BB King, and Miriam Makeba.
In the intervening time Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, an editor on that previous project, was given access to the abandoned original footage and sound recordings of the festival and has assembled the long-lost show, or at least part of it, in all its glory.
What emerges is both a great concert movie and a fascinating social document as Ali, Don King and members of the Black Panthers gather backstage and compare black life in America and Zaire and James Brown exhorts people to go out on the sidewalk and tell themselves 'I am someone”.
Staying in Africa, the film, Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, centres on the more than 20 year career of the titular Senegalese singer and activist, and has won awards at festivals around the world. It showcases both the man's mighty voice, a thing of wonder that all the world should hear and his work fighting poverty and trying to bring technology to Africa.
Centre stage is the artist's 2004 Egypt album, a deeply spiritual work putting forward a more tolerant view of Islam and celebrating his Islamic faith. Despite being hailed as a masterpiece in the West, in Senegal, where he is bigger than the Beatles, it ignited serious religious controversy and he was accused of blasphemy. I Bring What I Love looks deep into the heart of this extraordinary visionary talent.
And then there's the guitar movie. Anyone who plays or has ever felt the visceral thrill of an electric guitar will want to see this. It Might Get Loud assembles three guitarists from different generations: Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White all get together and compare and contrast their approaches to the guitar. In fact there isn't too much film of them all together, the doco mainly follows them solo and delves into their differing philosophies and styles.
For White it is about a ‘fight with the guitar' and concert footage of him playing with profusely-bleeding hands backs it up; for The Edge, it is all about technology as he demonstrates the array of effects that create the U2 sound; for Page, rock is about sex, the guitar 'like the curves of a woman” and songs building 'like an orgasm”. Interesting interviews and rare archival clips make this an axe-slinger's dream.
And the non-musical films? There's a pile. Try political satire In The Loop, Werner Herzog's amazing Antarctic doco Encounters at the End of the World, Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, footballer Eric Cantona starring in Ken Loach's delightful Looking For Eric, John Woo's spectacular Chinese war film Red Cliff or the directorial debut of David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, the hugely-praised sci-fi outing Moon.
watusi@thesun.co.nz