R18 (Violence, offensive language & sex scenes)

Content note: Suicide, sexual assault theme

BOOKING DETAILS

To book, you must have a valid full year membership to the Wellington Film Society. You can book up to two seats per film - but all attendees must be valid full year members. We are making half the seats in the theatre bookable. The rest of the seats will be available on the day on a 'first come, first served' basis.

If you have a three film sampler membership, you cannot book in advance. You can attend screenings on the ‘first come, first served’ basis for the remaining seats. We will clip your card for each screening you attend. Bring a buddies are not valid.

Your membership must be valid at the time of booking, and also at the time of the screening in June. If you need to renew during this time, make sure you do so via our website - https://wellingtonfilms.nz

You must book through Humanitix using the same name and email as your Wellington Film Society membership, in order to enable cross-referencing.

Places are bookable per film rather than for the whole festival – so you can pick what you want to see. We’ll be clearing and cleaning the theatre between films so you’ll need to leave, just like between our usual Monday 6 and 8:30 screenings. Seating will be unallocated for all screenings, as normal.

On the day of the screening, we will check both your Humanitix booking via a QR code, and your Film Society membership.

Please be on time, if you are not, we may give your booking away to members who are waiting. Please be seated in the cinema five minutes before the screening time. After that point we do not guarantee your booking is valid.

FILM DETAILS

Like a Robert Altman film made by Martin Scorsese, Boogie Nights announced its 27-year old director Paul Thomas Anderson as a major figure in cinema, a status he has handily maintained ever since, including with his recent triumph of One Battle After Another. The 90s are a stacked decade for amazing films, but when we imagined a Friday night at the Embassy as part of our festival, we couldn’t move past Boogie Nights.

Like his next feature, Magnolia, Boogie Nights is a sprawling multi-character epic. Its setting is the porn scene in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley in its heyday, when Times Square was full of late-night theatres and John Holmes was a household name. Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a bus boy in a disco club where he meets Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and his wife Amber Waves. Eddie joins the industry under the stage name Dirk Diggler, and we see his rise and fall as the excesses of the scene get the better of him. Anderson’s cast of actors are a delight, from John C Reilly’s hilarious Reed Rothchild, to Phillip Seymour-Hoffman’s tragic Scotty J.

A story of found family, finding yourself, and, of course, playing the part, is told through Anderson’s bravura filmmaking. Long choreographed steadicam shots, incredible needledrops, and a funny and heartbreaking script that’s equal parts cynical and sentimental demonstrate an incredible maturity for a director’s early work.

“There was little in Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut feature, Hard Eight, to prepare us for the confidence, exuberance, and sheer panache of his surprise – and surprising – Boogie Nights… It’s a hunka hunka burnin’ celluloid.” – Jay Carr, The Boston Globe

Contact the host of 'Boogie Nights' - WFS Film Fest screening - members only booking