40 Jahre Goethe-Institut Neuseeland
Paul Brobbel

One of my fondest memories of opening the Len Lye Centre at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in 2015 was overseeing the establishing a cinema at the heart of the new centre. While Len Lye is well known in Aotearoa for his kinetic sculpture, his reputation around the world is built on his ground breaking experimental cinema of the 1930s. One of the principles that guided the establishment of the LLC cinema was that the best way to honour a filmmaker of the past was to fully embrace contemporary cinema and provide the best opportunities we can to contemporary filmmakers.
 
Since its opening the Len Lye Centre has offered audiences in New Plymouth an eclectic and world class cinema experience. The very first part of that programme to fall into place was our monthly screening of films from Germany through our relationship with the Goethe-Institut New Zealand. Every month our audience attends a free screening of German cinema in addition to the nation-wide Goethe Institut German Film Festival which we proudly host each year.
 
In 2017 the Goethe Institut assisted with my visit to the Internationale Kurzfilmtage in Oberhausen through the Visitors Programme of NRW KULTURsekretariat. Two years later we welcomed the Oberhausen film festival’s touring programme into the cinema for the first time.