Thoughts from the committee
Just in time for its 80th anniversary, Wellington Film Society is excited to stage a live cinema performance for a film with a strong Wellington flavour.
Swedish director Victor Sjöström made The Wind in 1928, after being hand-picked by silent film superstar Lillian Gish. Gish plays Letty, a young woman who travels to an isolated Texas ranch where she finds the locals inhospitable and the wind unbearable. These surroundings are so oppressive that Letty is driven to madness and the film ends up feeling more horror than western.
The score will be composed and performed by a duo of Wellington-based musicians drawing on their experience living somewhere so windy that it’s impossible to get used to it.
hara is the solo project of Indonesian singer-songwriter Rara Sekar, whose music blends folk, Indonesian traditional forms, cinematic pop, ambient textures, and field recordings. Her work explores themes of ecology, vulnerability, grief, and politics, creating atmospheric and reflective sound worlds. hara has performed at select music and literary festivals including Camp A Low Hum 2024 (Wainuiomata), Newtown Festival (Wellington), Joyland Festival (Jakarta), Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (Bali), and Makassar International Writers Festival. She has opened for Ichiko Aoba (Saison de Fleur Tour, Jakarta) and collaborated with numerous Indonesian artists. Her releases include the EPs Kenduri (2021) and Layar Terkembang (With Sails Unfurled) (2024), and original soundtracks Niskala (Sandiwara Sastra – Misteri Nusantara) and Tak Ada Keluarga yang Sempurna (Dua Hati Biru). Her work has been featured on the BBC World Service – Music Life Podcast, BBC Radio 3’s Ultimate Calm with Ólafur Arnalds, and BBC The Cultural Frontline, and included in Teju Cole’s playlist ‘the same sun’.
Thomas Arbor is a composer, producer, and audio engineer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. His practice spans theatre, screen, dance, and installation, blending strong technical craft with a sensitivity to spatial and emotional storytelling. He is experienced in composition, sound design, recording, mixing, mastering, and live sound, and has worked with leading Aotearoa artists and institutions. From 2021 to 2025, Thomas has worked as an Audio Conservation Technician at the National Library of New Zealand, specialising in the preservation and restoration of audio materials. In 2021, he also served as a Digital Archivist at the National Library, working on the collection of sonic artist John Cousins–including the archival projects Tales from the Acousmonium Pt. 1 and Pt. 2. Recent projects include The Sound Inside (dir. Stella Reid, Circa Theatre, 2025), and Journey of Scent, a 6-part music web series (dir. Jessica Sanderson) for RNZ. Thomas is reuniting with WFS one decade after his celebrated score for The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
“In a sense, I went through the Swedish school of acting… I had gotten rather close to the Italian school in Italy… The Italian school is one of elaboration; the Swedish is one of repression.” – Lilian Gish on Victor Sjöström, in Albert Bigelow Payne’s Life and Lillian Gish