Len Lye Centre Cinema

The Len Lye Centre Cinema was a requisite feature of the Len Lye Centre - an essential exhibition space for Len Lye's films (both analogue and digital) and a forum for contemporary filmmaking and artist's moving image. During the build of the Len Lye Centre (2013-2015), I was appointed project lead to facilitate an urgent review and revision to the specifications and fit out of the facility. Working with NEC, a complete rescoping of projection capacity involved 16mm and 35mm and DCP projection solutions and attendant technologies.

The cinema opened on 25 July 2015 with screenings of Len Lye's "Tusalava" and Leon Narbey's "A Film of REAL TIME" followed by performances of the Auckland Philharmonia expanding Lye's film oeuvre with live accompaniment.

The absence a dedicated film programmer on staff required my role of Len Lye Curator to absorb cinema duties for the the first years of operation. Programming was built upon a foundation of programming partnerships, including The New Zealand International Film Festival, The New Zealand Film Commission, The Goethe Institut, the British Council, The Latin America and Spain Film Festival, The Film Foundation (Los Angeles) and The New Plymouth Film Society.

Secondary to this foundation was a commitment to artist's cinema, acknowledging the work of Len Lye as a vehicle to champion and explore fine art filmmaking. Artists to be surveyed in the first years of the programme included American filmmakers Shirley Clarke (1919-1997) and Jodie Mack (1983-) and Canadian filmmaker Alexandre Larose (1978-).

A resurrection of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery's previous film programme, "The Projection Series", completed the shape of the cinema programme with a seasonally curated exhibition of short films accompanied by a catalogue with a curator's essay and film notes. Operating over four years and 13 series, "The Projection Series" screened not only in the Len Lye Centre programme but at venues internationally including Melbourne, United Kingdom and Lithuania.

A longstanding feature of the cinema programme precedes its architecture. In 2013, anticipating the international significance of a cinema in the Len Lye Centre, I conceived and developed the Govett-Brewster's International Film Curator in Residence. Designed to bring leading cinema practitioners into the Len Lye Centre, the Curator in Residence has been through four iterations over the last decade, welcoming Philippe-Alain Michaud (The Pompidou Centre), Kathy Geritz (BAM|PFA), Erika Balsom (King's College), and Alla Gadassik (Emily Carr University of Art and Design) to Aotearoa.