Weekend Film Series BUEI Double Feature
A documentary about the Greenpeace environmental movement focusing on the iconic “Rainbow Warrior” ship, and a French feel-good dramedy starring Oscar winner Kevin Kline, are the featured films at the Weekend Film Series on Sunday March 13.
The documentary, “The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island”, screens at 3 p.m. while “Queen to Play” will screen at 5 p.m. Tickets, $15, can be purchased in the Oceans Gift Shop at the BUEI, or by calling 297-7314.
The “Rainbow Warrior” was more than a ship. From the time that the fledgling Greenpeace movement purchased the old fishing trawler to go and save whales, until its sinking in 1985 at the hands of the French secret service, it led the campaign against nuclear testing and whaling, and became the international symbol for the entire environmental movement.
For her former activist crew, who have now settled on Waiheke Island off Auckland, the sinking of the ship was a turning point in their lives.
Featuring archive footage of the protests, plus stunning film of the Greenpeace crew’s evacuation of an entire island population ravaged by the effects of nuclear testing, the film brings to life a piece of modern history.
It also examines the changing nature of activism. Have celebrity endorsements replaced direct action? Have chipper telemarketers supplanted risk-taking demonstrators? Is Greenpeace a movement — or a multinational?
The film has screened at some of the world’s top festivals: Berlin, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, and Hot Docs, as well as at some 20 other festivals worldwide.
Oscar winner Kevin Kline (“A Fish Called Wanda”) and the luminous Sandrine Bonnaire (“Vagabond”) square off in “Queen to Play”, a stylish and sophisticated feel-good dramedy of newfound passions and mid-life triumphs, set on the postcard-perfect isle of Corsica.
Lovely, repressed and quietly intelligent, French chambermaid Hélène (Bonnaire) discovers she has a knack for chess.
This obsession — much to the chagrin of her husband and teenaged daughter — leads her to seek the clandestine tutelage of a reclusive American doctor (Kline, in his first French-speaking role) — a liaison that radically transforms both of their lackluster lives.
Both films, which are subtitled, are rated PG.
The Weekend Film Series, sponsored by Gosling’s, is a joint production of Bermuda Documentary Film Festival director Duncan Hall and the BUEI.
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