What we’re about
We’re a group of film lovers who come together on Monday nights between February and October to watch the best local and international cinema. You’ll find us at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Montreal Street.
We’d love you to join us for a drink, snacks, and casual socialising from 7pm in the Art Gallery’s spacious foyer, followed by a short introductory talk and our film screening which begin at 7:30pm.
Our 2023 programme features an impressive 34 films including dramas, comedies, classics, documentaries and cult films. Most of these are members only, but six of our screenings are free and open-to-the-public. Check our events list or the full programme on our website for more details:
https://www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz/programme
Full membership includes admission to every film we screen for $140, and we offer discounts for students, the unwaged, and seniors. If you just want to try a few films, we offer a $40 Flexi-Pass which gives one admission to any three films — or three admissions to any one film — and never expires.
https://www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz/join
Upcoming events (4)
See all- OPEN Film Screening - Waxworks (Paul Leni • 1924)Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch
Canterbury Film Society would like to invite everyone to come along for our free screening of an Expressionist classic of the silent era, Waxworks (Paul Leni • 1924 • 82 mins • Germany • PG)
A waxworks setting allows for an anthology of stories with Paul Leni creating “an inventory of expressionistic effects, using a different style, motif, and mood for each of its three episodes. The first is erotic and very funny, with Jannings as a wicked Caliph whose rotundity is echoed by the Bagdad sets, all bulbous walls and secret orifices. The second is a sadistic fantasia, with Veidt as Ivan the Terrible, eventually driven mad by his own tortures. The last is a phantasmagoria of Jack the Ripper (Krauss), pursuing young lovers through a nightmare London of cobblestones and fog. The result is consistently enthralling, years ahead of its time.” Time Out Check out the trailer: WAXWORKS Trailer
This is an OPEN EVENT screened in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut and non-members are encouraged to come and join us with admission by donation/koha at the door. Non-ticketed: first come, first served so arrive early to avoid disappointment.
The Film Society is a sociable group of film-lovers of all ages and we regularly welcome new members. Doors open at 7.00pm and you can mingle in the foyer (home baked treats and drinks available - please bring cash).
Let us take you further into film!
- Film Screening: Pigs and Battleships (Shōhei Imamura • 1961)Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch
Join Canterbury Film Society for our screening of Shōhei Imamura’s New Wave take on small-time gangsters in post-war Japan, Pigs and Battleships (1961 • 108 mins • Japan • M)
“This wonderfully unglamorous, breathtakingly sarcastic yakuza movie is set in the port of Yokosuka, which is dominated by the US Navy battleships moored in the harbour... Through black market deals with the Americans the gang of which our ne’er-do-well hero Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) is a junior member has got a corner in the local pork trade; Kinta gets to run the pig farm. But in the brutal struggle for survival, in which everyone prostitutes him- or herself and self-destructiveness runs rife, the not very bright Kinta’s love for the beautiful Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura) is endangered in all sorts of ways. Filmed in black-and-white Nikkatsuscope, this riotous gangster black farce is packed with unforgettable scenes.” The Telegraph
Check out this trailer: Filles et Gangsters - YouTube (English subtitles will be provided on Monday night!)
This is a Film Society Members Only screening - so go to www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz to see membership options (including 3-film Flexipasses for $40) and then join/pay online. Or bring along cash (eftpos not available) and sign up at the membership table before 7.20pm. Film starts at 7.30pm.
You'll find host Barbara at Fiddlestick Bar across the road from 6.30 to welcome Meetup members who would like to meet-up before the film.
The Film Society is a sociable group of film-lovers of all ages and we regularly welcome new members. Doors open at 7.00pm and you can mingle in the foyer (home baked treats and drinks available - please bring cash).
Let us take you further into film!
- Film Screening: France (Bruno Dumont • 2021 • M)Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch
Join Canterbury Film Society for our screening of Bruno Dumont satirical examination of 24-hour news culture, France (2021 • 133 mins • France • M)
“The title refers both to the country and to a TV journalist, France de Meurs (Léa Seydoux), whose ambitious yet stage-managed reports from war zones - and one-upping confrontations with officials, including France’s President, Emmanuel Macron - are done with one eye on ratings and the other on social media. These exploits have made her famous, and fame has alienated her from her principles, her emotions, her family, and herself. A minor accident that becomes a major Internet sensation sends her into a tailspin of depression and into another vortex of media attention; real tragedy hits mainly as a photo op. Amid the film’s riotous satire involving tricked-out news and political distortions, Dumont plants a melancholy melodrama of an identity crisis: the television star and the nation are equally unrecognizable to themselves, and equally isolated in the distorting mirrors of their own fabricated images. — Richard Brody, New Yorker
Check out the trailer: FRANCE Trailer - YouTube
This is a Film Society Members Only screening - so go to www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz to see membership options (including 3-film Flexipasses for $40) and then join/pay online. Or bring along cash (eftpos not available) and sign up at the membership table before 7.20pm. Film starts at 7.30pm.
You'll find host Barbara at Fiddlestick Bar across the road from 6.30 to welcome Meetup members who would like to meet-up before the film.
The Film Society is a sociable group of film-lovers of all ages and we regularly welcome new members. Doors open at 7.00pm and you can mingle in the foyer (home baked treats and drinks available - please bring cash).
Let us take you further into film!
- Film Screening: Crash (David Cronenberg • 1996 • R18)Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch
Join Canterbury Film Society for our final screening of 2023 with David Cronenberg’s cult classic: Crash (1996 • 100 mins • Canada • R18)
“For this icily erotic fusion of flesh and machine, David Cronenberg adapted JG Ballard’s future-shock novel of the 1970s into one of the most singular and provocative films of the 1990s. A traffic collision involving a disaffected commercial producer, James (James Spader), and an enigmatic doctor, Helen (Holly Hunter), brings them, along with James’s wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger, in a sublimely detached performance), together in a crucible of blood and broken glass – and it’s not long before they are all initiated into a kinky, death-obsessed underworld of sadomasochistic car-crash fetishists for whom twisted metal and scar tissue are the ultimate turn-ons. Controversial from the moment it premiered at Cannes – where it won a Special Jury Prize ‘for originality, for daring, and for audacity’ – Crash has since taken its place as a key text of late-twentieth-century cinema, a disturbingly seductive treatise on the relationships between humanity and technology, sex and violence, that is as unsettling as it is mesmerizing.” — Criterion
Please note that this film is rated R18. Check out the trailer: David Cronenberg’s Crash - YouTube
This is a Film Society Members Only screening - so go to www.canterburyfilmsociety.org.nz to see membership options (including 3-film Flexipasses for $40) and then join/pay online. Or bring along cash (eftpos not available) and sign up at the membership table before 7.20pm. Film starts at 7.30pm.
The Film Society is a sociable group of film-lovers of all ages and we regularly welcome new members. Doors open at 7.00pm and you can mingle in the foyer (home baked treats and drinks available - please bring cash).
Let us take you further into film!
