The Film Festival is down to its final days and there has been a huge variety of films on this week. The Patti Smith documentary (filmed over ten years) kept us all enthralled, Waltz With Bashir made us weep and Be Kind Rewind gave us the oppportunity to remember those 70s and 80s films – albeit with a new DIY perspective.

For enjoying these and other films on this week, the Film and Television database has articles from a broad range of film magazines: Film Comment, Cineaste, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, Sight & Sound, OnFilm plus many others.  Here is a selection: Waltz With Bashir, Be Kind Rewind, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, The Savages, Let The Right One In, Dear Zachary and Frozen River (if the links don’t work automatically for you, login here first).

Seen any films that make you want to check out the director’s previous offerings? Our DVD collection is here to help. You may already know that our collection includes films by directors such as Eric Rohmer, Ken Loach, Werner Herzog, Michel Gondry and Errol Morris, but you may not realise that you can continue your film festival after this weekend by also exploring these other directors who are featured this year:Derek Jarman, Costa Botes, Julian Schnabel, Alex Gibney, Barbet Schroeder, Gregory King, Jacques Rivette, Michael Curtiz, Tom McCarthy, Shane Meadows, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Alexander Sokurov, Sergei Bodrov, Bent Hamer, Wong Kar-wai, Dany Boon, Cedric Klapisch and of course Vincent Ward. Marjane Satrapi may not have made any other movies yet , but her graphic novels are excellent – one of which is the original Persepolis graphic novel.

Spending every waking moment at the Film Festival?  Or just going to the odd film that takes your fancy? Here are some reviews and information about films showing over the first week, courtesy of our new Film and Television database.

(If the links below don’t work for you automatically, login to EBSCO with your library card details, then return to this page – the links will then take you to the reviews.)

Man on Wire | Persepolis | Waltz with Bashir | Adventures of Robin Hood | Paris | No End in Sight | Vexville | Anita O’Day: The Life of a Singer | Earth | Somers Town

Of course if you want further inspiration, we’ll be highlighting more films as the Festival progresses.  In the meantime, check out the Festival posters currently on display on the First Floor of Central Library – along with items from our extensive film book collection.

Telecom 35th Wellington Film Festival brochures are out and the website is up. If you’re feeling peckish for quality DVDs (only $3/week), you can search our collection by genre, including foreign language, classic novels, nostalgia and documentaries. Work your way through the Criterion collection or Director’s suite series. From last year’s film festival we have adored documentary The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, David LaChapelle’s urban doco Rize, Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, The edukators and more.