Last year's New Zealand Film Festival records will be hard to top without a Fahrenheit 9/11, but film fans prepared to look a little harder for quality should be rewarded. Alastair Bull reports. Without a big-name drawcard which helped produce record attendances last year, Bill Gosden could be excused if he felt a little anxious as the 2005 New Zealand Film Festival series draws near. The festival has a solid collection of dramas from around the world, while documentaries play a strong part and this year there is a high number of sports films in particular, including Murderball, about wheelchair rugby. The major retrospective is of 1950s American director Nicholas Ray, best-known for his James Dean vehicle Rebel Without A Cause, a new print of which screens at the festival. There are also silent movies with musical accompaniment; in Auckland it's the 1926 Russian silent The Battleship Potemkin, complete with the Auckland Sinfonia, while in Wellington it's the 1926 dinosaur film The Lost World, featuring the animator who would later work on the original King Kong. [More]