We’re busy preparing our 2025 programme and look forward to sharing all the details with you in the new year. We’re expecting to start screening in late February and our 2025 programme will feature at least 32 films.
We’ve already announced that we’ll be screening every film on our 2025 programme twice:
- The first screening will be at 6pm on Monday nights.
- The second screening will be at 8.30pm on Monday nights (or occasionally, when the film is particularly long, at 8.30pm on Tuesday nights).
We’ve also already announced our special live cinema event for 2025: a 100th anniversary screening of New Zealand director Rupert Julian’s 1925 The Phantom of the Opera, which will be accompanied by a new score performed live by a group of local musicians led by taonga puoro practitioner and jazz musician Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe).
Although we’re still confirming all the details, we can share some further themes and titles that we’re expecting to screen at the Embassy next year:
- “It’s showtime, folks!” Bob Fosse’s 1979 film All That Jazz will open our 2025 programme in late February. This will be a dance-filled visual extravaganza on the Embassy screen. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale of the legendary Fosse’s own struggles with substance abuse in the pressure cooking environment of Broadway as a leading choreographer and theatre director.
- We’re building on the themes of films set in theatres where psychological themes come to the fore (we’re calling this Dancing on the Edge) with the Italian director Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. This film tells the story of American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) who comes to an academy in West Germany to find things are not as they should be… It also features an incredible score by prog-rock band, Goblin.
- To end our 2025 programme and the Dancing on the Edge theme, we’re playing one of the most acclaimed films of all time, the British directing duo Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948). Like Suspiria, this film also has a ballet dancer as its protagonist (Victoria Page played by Moira Shearer) and is renowned for its visual style and choreography, including a spellbinding dance number in the middle of the film.
- We’re also delighted to announce that we will be screening a season of three films by the beloved and hugely influential Japanese master Akira Kurosawa. This will include his 1952 film Ikiru, about a bureaucrat who learns he has terminal cancer – a discovery which inspires him to take action for the betterment of his community.
This is just a taste, and there is much more still to come, including themes of Ghost Stories and Peckinpah’s West; and titles from directors like Agnès Varda, Robert Altman and John Waters.
As per usual our programme will span the globe with films from Aotearoa, Mexico, Sweden, Japan, Korea, France and Germany among others.
You’ll be hearing more from us about the programme in the new year. We’re looking forward to seeing you back at the movies!