Auckland Film Festival

Founded in 1969 as a component of the Auckland Festival, the Auckland International Film Festival in time became a fund-raising event subsidising live arts. Rescued from this role by the intervention of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies in 1984, the Festival achieved an audience in excess of 100,000 for the first time in 2005. The year 2000 marked the Festival's return to the fabulously refurbished Civic Theatre, the South Pacific's most insanely beautiful picture palace.