Watching Brief: Sunday fest best

A scene from wonderful fishy doco Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Photo / Supplied

Disappointing turnout for the Mana Waka screening last night. It was an astonishing piece of work, really, a credit as much to editor Annie Collins as to the late Merata Mita who oversaw the whole project, which is detailed

here

and

here

.

Perhaps festivalgoers' wallets are a bit barer this year and their selections more judicious than normal, but it was a shame to see the film have only its second screening in Auckland before such a small house.

I had a $5 bet with one of the festival staffers that the event would start so late that there would be a crushed collision between those departing and those arriving for the 8.45pm of

The Tree of Life

. In the end, he won comfortably but the small turnout may have had something to do with that.

A couple of spare and moving mihi (including one by Mita's son, Eruera), rather than a full-scale powhiri, also ensured that things ran "to time" meaning only a decent interval late. And Film Archive CEO Frank Stark deserves a special mention for a short and fittingly self-effacing speech of cleverly crafted metaphor.

I have to say that the sight of King Tuheitia, leaning on his handsome tokotoko at the traffic lights and puffing on a cigarette was a little jarring, given the health toll of smoking rates among Maori. No doubt he wouldn't give a toss what a pakeha journalist has to say on the matter, but there it is. I don't know what the te reo rangatira equivalent is to noblesse oblige, but I am pretty sure there must be one.

Big day today: 26 films (in the festival, not in my viewing programme). If

Buck

, at the Rialto at 6.15pm hasn't sold out already it should, but it is really one of the standouts of the documentary programme - a close second to our own Annie Goldson's powerful but restrained

Brother Number One

next weekend.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

too, is wonderful. Watching it was certainly as close as I'll come to the $450, 20-minute, 15-piece sushi experience at his unassuming Tokyo restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro. To be honest, I'm not sure about whether this latest passion for elevating practitioners of Asian street cooking, like David (Momofuku) Chang, to superstar status group) is gastronomic wankery or not (then again, I've tried the "molecular gastronomy" of one of Ferran Adria's acolytes and to be honest I would rather eat food). Never mind that: whatever Jiro is like as a sushi chef, as a subject for a portrait-of-the-artist documentary the 85-year-old is a star.

Yesterday I saw

Sleeping Sickness

, the German film set in Cameroon which earned director Ulrich Köhler the best director prize at the Berlin Film Festival. It screens again tonight and is definitely worth seeing: the tone seemed reminiscent of Claire Denis (

Chocolat

,

White Material

), though that may be because of its African setting.

But it is an engrossing drama, told in two different time sequences, about the corruption of aid programmes and, by extension, the human spirit. The ending seemed unnecessarily oblique, but I have been gently haunted by it ever since and that's always the sign of a good film.

Special treat:

A Cat in Paris

at the Bridgeway at 4:15. You don't have to take a kid, but it would help.