Bill Gosden: A life devoted to film

Bill Gosden, the outgoing director of the New Zealand International Film Festival, at home in Mt Victoria, Wellington.
Ross Giblin/Stuff
Bill Gosden, the outgoing director of the New Zealand International Film Festival, at home in Mt Victoria, Wellington.

Bill Gosden was in the midst of running last year's New Zealand International Film Festival – a role that had consumed his past 40 years – when he got the devastating news that would shape the next part of his life story. Sarah Catherall spoke to him before this year's festival begins. 

Bill Gosden holds a brown glass bottle of kombucha, which gleams beneath cafe lights. The former director of the New Zealand International Film Festival found out he had bowel cancer too late. Diagnosed in June 2017, the 65-year-old had three rounds of chemotherapy and significant surgery over the next year.

In the midst of last year's NZIFF, in what should have been one of the best months of his life – when those films he worked to bring to film fanatics finally made it to screens – Gosden's oncologist told him the cancer had metastasised to his lungs.

Gosden's blue eyes well up behind stylish brown glasses. "If I were in Australia, France, or the UK, I probably wouldn't be in the position I am in now," he says, referring to New Zealand's much-criticised bowel cancer screening programme.

Gosden has been at the festival helm for almost 40 years, during which time he's seen NZ film and cinema undergo dramatic change.
Ross Giblin/Stuff
Gosden has been at the festival helm for almost 40 years, during which time he's seen NZ film and cinema undergo dramatic change.

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He should have had a colonoscopy earlier. He reported significant irregularity in his bowel habits but his blood tests were OK, so his GP didn't worry. "I was very fit, so I think that masked my illness. It's so annoying. When you hear the bowel cancer education programmes, I think, 'I did everything they're telling me to do.' I would encourage people to definitely get screened if they are worried," he says.

Gosden departs his role at the festival's helm in glowing lights. Last year's festival sold a record number of tickets, and Gosden programmed triple the number of films compared to when he took on the job in 1981. Dame Gaylene Preston, the award-winning Wellington film-maker, says: "I go to a lot of film festivals and I know how they are being forced to change because they are losing sponsorship and they are losing audiences, but I have to say that the film festival that Bill has built is one of the best in the world."

Film has been Gosden's world since he began reviewing them for his Dunedin high school newspaper – one of his first reviews was of M*A*S*H – rated R18 – when he was just 16. Jet-lagged when we meet, he has not long returned from a trip visiting many of the friends he met over the years in the United States and Canada – film buffs like him – who put on film festivals, distribute films, living and breathing the world as he does. In his living room are a stack of blu-ray discs he was given by New York-based friends at The Criterion Collection.

Gosden was last year diagnosed bowel cancer, which prompted his resignation.
Ross Giblin/Stuff
Gosden was last year diagnosed bowel cancer, which prompted his resignation.

"I didn't watch many films when I was away, more live theatre," he says. "I had been grounded for two years. There was the prospect of being grounded again too."

It's fitting that we meet in Deluxe cafe, a bohemian establishment next door to Wellington's Embassy Theatre. This neighbourhood at the bottom of Mt Victoria, on the edge of Courtenay Pl, has been Gosden's stomping ground for the past four decades. His home is a few hundred steps away, where he has lived since he arrived in Wellington in his early 20s, armed with an English literature degree.

A quietly spoken, modest man, Gosden has always preferred to put other people's stories on the big screen rather than make his own. He has been the equivalent of a film historian, and a cultural commissar. Has he ever wanted to make a film? He shakes his head. "I never felt like I had something I needed to say. I was happy to fertilise the programmes."

Since taking on the role, Gosden has spent several months a year watching films, choosing a mix of classics, foreign films, shorts, documentaries, and New Zealand works to show to a growing audience. The programming team of three watched 700-800 films a year, choosing 150 to 170 for festivals in recent years.

Despite watching thousands over his lifetime, Gosden has never wanted to make his own film.
Ross Giblin/Stuff
Despite watching thousands over his lifetime, Gosden has never wanted to make his own film.

"When you watch a film that excites you, it's a privilege to share that film more widely. It is one of the great joys of my job."

When he joined the Wellington Film Festival (the NZIFF's former name) in 1981, Gosden programmed 47 films over 16 days, most from overseas, all screening at the capital's Paramount Theatre. The festival had the budget for him to attend one international film festival, and London controlled most of the film rights, so he headed there.

His eyes shine as he talks about the late 1970s and 1980s as exhilarating times for the New Zealand film industry. Goodbye Pork Pie and Sleeping Dogs hit the big screen. The NZ Film Commission was born in 1978. "We were very excited and committed to staying in New Zealand and making things happen here. Until that time, if you wanted to make a film, you had to go overseas," he reflects.

"Here, there has been the emergence of an actual film industry and that has obviously gone through a lot of changes in the 40 years. The digitisation of everything is probably the biggest change, but that is in all walks of life.That has facilitated the growth of the film industry, though."

Dame Gaylene Preston's film Mr Wrong was a success because Gosden screen it at the NZIFF, she says.
MONIQUE FORD/STUFF
Dame Gaylene Preston's film Mr Wrong was a success because Gosden screen it at the NZIFF, she says.

Throughout his career, his goal was always to expand and grow the audience, and put a chink in the dominance of Hollywood cinema. "It was really about trying to make the environment more receptive to a much wider variety of voices. I always felt quite strongly about that. I do find the Hollywood industrial model quite aggressive at times. I hoped to make people's cinema diets a little bit more varied.

"I hoped that people would question what they saw, and the film festival was a good environment for that."

Gosden wasn't always popular. When the NZIFF showed Davis Guggenheim's 2010 film, Waiting for Superman, about charter schools, a lobby group tried to shut it down. "I found that quite depressing. There was an assumption that by showing the film I was promoting its agenda, which was the opposite of what I was trying to do."

He was booed on an opening night at the Embassy in the 80s when he bemoaned the banning of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. For every attack – film patrons cornering him in the lobby about his film choices – there were even more who praised.

Anzac Wallace as Māori Warrior Te Wheke in Geoff Murphy's Utu Redux, one of Gosden's all-time favourite films, which he screened at the 2013 NZIFF.
SUPPLIED/FAIRFAX NZ
Anzac Wallace as Māori Warrior Te Wheke in Geoff Murphy's Utu Redux, one of Gosden's all-time favourite films, which he screened at the 2013 NZIFF.

Scoring the world premiere of Heavenly Creatures was a coup. "The film was exceptionally good, when many had feared otherwise. It was such a huge step up for Peter [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh] and it was clearly going to make waves internationally."

In 2004, "the planets aligned" bringing Telecom's sponsorship, Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange programme, the super-documentary, and a bumper homegrown crop such as In My Father's Den and Kaikohe Demolition. Gosden would watch the films of 1995 again, even though it was a disastrous year for film attendance. "And how could I not look with satisfaction on 2018, my final programme, and our most well-attended ever?"

In 1984, Preston took her film Mr Wrong to the only two film distributors, Kerridge and Amalgamated, hoping one might screen it. Kerridge said an outright no, while Amalgamated said "probably not". She recalls: "We had a useless pile of plastic and no-one would screen it. It's a feminist spooky thriller. It was 1984. I don't know why I thought they would jump at it. But I showed it to Bill and, fortunately, he loved it.

"He scheduled the film to have its world premiere at the [Auckland] Civic on a Saturday at 5pm. I was outraged. I said, 'Why aren't we opening the festival?'

'People have been very generous with what they have said. That's the consolation prize.'
Ross Giblin/Stuff
'People have been very generous with what they have said. That's the consolation prize.'

"But, people came. There was a standing ovation when it ended. I thought people were standing up to put their coats on."

Gosden programmed Mr Wrong to next screen in Wellington. Says Preston: "There were people standing outside the Embassy with $10 notes trying to watch it. It roared up and down the country. Without Bill putting it in the festival, we wouldn't have got anywhere."

Over the years, she reflects that Gosden always knew his audience as he programmed each festival – the film buffs who wanted to be challenged and to watch unusual films, and mainstream crowds who wanted more palatable fare. He successfully managed to please both crowds.

Preston points out that he selected films and programmed them at the right times so people would go and see them.

"He has also always picked the Cannes winner and the Palm d'Or winner every year. New Zealanders are the first audiences to see those films. There are a lot of negotiations that go on to get those films here, which people really don't appreciate.

"What Bill Gosden has done to contribute to the New Zealand culture by bringing those films here is huge. He has done a huge amount for Māori film-makers here, and for local film-makers."

Back in the cafe, Gosden's eyes light up as he talks about a few of the 30 films he helped select for 2019, which will be shown from next month at 14 centres around the country. Bellbird is the debut feature by Hamish Bennett, a former Auckland teacher, and "a film-maker to watch". "It's a poignant comedy set on a small family dairy farm in Northland. The two men – father and son – are trying to keep the dairy farm going after the death of the wife and the mother. It's a very sweet movie. It's a classic."

Another film Gosden chose, the Aretha Franklin documentary, Amazing Grace, will also screen. "It gives you goosebumps listening to her sing."

He goes quiet again. "I was really reluctant to leave my job for obvious reasons. I love my job. If it hadn't been for the unexpected, I would have stayed for another five years. It's tough. It's hard. I feel very sad about that," he says.

"The upside is that I've heard from people that my work has been appreciated. You don't get that if you get hit by a bus. People have been very generous with what they have said. That's the consolation prize."

Gosden got the green light from his oncologist to travel to the Sydney Film Festival to be on its festival jury. For the first time in 40 years, the man who has kept New Zealanders informed and entertained during the biting winter months may miss his first gala opening.

He smiles. "I'm hoping I can persuade my friends upstairs to sneak me a few links to some of the film festival titles."

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