Inside Out Toronto!
Rubbings is confirmed for Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival for its North American Premiere!
Rubbings is confirmed for GAZE – Dublin LGBT Film Festival www.gaze.ie
Live Man screened as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras film festival at the beginning of the year.
Land of the Long White Cloud
Florian begins shooting his new doco 2 March 2009 in the far North of New Zealand. He has also been commissioned to make a 42 second short film on the subject of dreams, for One Dream Rush. The other indi NZ film makers from the 42 around the world are Niki Caro, and Taika Cohen. www.42x42.com
NZ Herald Time Out Guide
Rubbings from a Live Man listed as one of top five documentaries of the year from around the world!
Real Groove Magazine Review
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
How thrilling is it to see a filmmaker like Florian Habicht hone his craft right before our eyes. Five years ago the German born, Auckland-based director stunned audiences with Woodenhead. Now, after Kaikohe Demolition, his documentary about one of Northland's most violent spectator sports, comes this "documentary performed by" New Zealand performance artist Warwick Broadhead.
Habicht and Broadhead collaborate to create one of the most original and memorable films this year. The 63-year-old actor's life has been full of trials and tribulations including family suicides, a harrowing jail stay, a term with an avant-garde theatre troup and just recently, four heart attacks. It's all laid out in this very intimate film. Broadhead in every scene either recalling the events of his fascinating life or playing any number of parts from a nursing mother to God himself.
Along with Warwick's own life, the film develops a sub-plot of sorts when Habicht's efforts to get Warwick to open up and confront his life result in some rather tense moments between the director and his subject. By the end Warwick confronts Florian asking the camera, 'how raw do you want to see a person?" and "what sort of vulture are you?"
This is breath-takingly honest cinema and Habicht's unique vision and approach to the subject matter makes this a feast for the eyes and the heart.
Marty Duda.
Christchurch Star Review
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Performance artist Warwick Broadhead has written, directed and produced over 60 plays in New Zealand. From Botanic Gardens to private homes he has staged his brand of theatre described as " ...calloborative, improvisational and intuitive'" resulting not in 'intellectual analysis' but with " emotional responses and emotional truth" to audiences for over 40 years. Never before allowing his work to be recorded, director Florian Habicht ( Kaikohe Demolition) and producer Philippa Campbell together with Broadhead reinact the unique diary of his altogether vivacious existence from his early years onwards. Through his own candid ruminations and with help from alter- ego friends we hike Rubbings From a Live Man through youth, sexuality, death and spirituality. If Bob Parker's 'This is Your Life" seems a little derivitive then this canvas will blow your mind through Broadhead's sideshow artistry of Karmic interludes, which has Broadhead (after discovering LSD) surrounded by a melee of communal lovers caressing a clearly tripping, adventure seeking thespian in 60's San Francisco or a Seraph-like being adorned by ping pong balls and empty water bottles anointing rugby players with ashes, Lest one explain, this documentary journeys through suicide, depression, talking to dust mites and on to what resembles a remarkably personal psychodrama session. Using Broadhead's alter ego (and other story telling tecniques) provides the breathing room for this project to gestate in often confrontational circumstances given that the subject had never been directed before. It took four weeks in an Auckland house and locale to film the dramatics, Habichts persistance, cinemaphotographer Chris Pryor's elagaic framing captures the raw essence of grief, guilt, contemplation, every hesitant second with unflinching force and clarity as we go deeper into the punchbowl. Marc Chesterman's original music and use of classical works underscores the potent power of the mood served up. Ultimately this documentary success lies within it's subject and one that so little is known about in Christchurch will perplex some with it's frankness, but make no mistake it's a magical carpet ride with all the visual fantasy expertly woven into it's fabric. Destined into the pantheon of greatness Kiwi Florian Habicht's record to date (among a few others) shines a lone torch in the right direction of New Zealand Film to progress beyond the banality that financiers so arbitrarily feed our screens. A performance you won't forget, it's encore will be ringing long after the curtain comes down on this man's extraordinary life.
Nick Paris
Craccum Magazine Review
Rubbings from a Live Man is a documentary about theatre artist and performer Warwick Broadhead. Conceived by Florian Habicht and Warwick Broadhead collaboratively it is both a documentary and a series of captured glimpses at Warwick’s performance art. Warwick is truly captivating as an artist and often his works include performances in people’s own living rooms- his work is intensely personal and spontaneous. Florian has managed to capture this ephemeral element of Warwick within a timeless mastery of documentary style. At the start of the premiere Florian could not contain his enthusiasm for the film and praise for all those he worked with bubbled over and into the crowd. Glowing orbs of colour were passed throughout the crowd as the film began and were entirely appropriate considering the richness of colour throughout the film. The film was as vibrant in colour as a piece of fine art, whilst being a moving image, which, as Warwick delightfully informs us, is what cinema is all about- using a Michael Jackson prop to do so. ‘Live Man’ was everything its title suggests: a thoughtful, intimate exploration into one man’s upbringing, travel experiences, sexuality, artistic expression, relationships and present day state and often this is through his quick wit and youthful sense of fun and enthusiasm. Warwick’s profound effect on those privileged to be a part of the performance that is his life was palpable within the theatre, when the time came for him to speak after the film the crowd rose to applaud him and the sense of mutual care, love and respect was overwhelming. So first he spoke his gratitude then he moved his body on the stage free-form allowing us to create and imagine whatever words we liked. Finally he called all his friends, family and the movie’s crew on the stage for a rendition of ‘The Great Pretender’. It was a brilliant effect having the film book-ended by these open displays as it allowed it to spill out on either end and not be contained within cinematic parameters. After the premiere was well and truly over, and there was an opportunity to speak to Warwick at Galatos all my Mum could say was that she found him adorable and was deeply moved. I then said I supposed he heard that sort of thing all the time, to this he replied that one could never be told enough. So I do not hesitate to liberally praise another gem from Florian Habicht and Warwick Broadhead.
Rachael Darcie McKinnon
New Zealand Herald Review 6 Nov 2008
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Verdict: Unabashedly outrageous and often very moving portrayal of a local theatrical maestro.
Anyone lucky enough to have witnessed (or, luckier still, taken part in) a Warwick Broadhead show will find this portrait of the artist irresistible; anyone else will find it mystifying - but may not be immune to its many fascinations.
In several dozen shows over four decades, Broadhead created flamboyant, extravagant pieces of theatre, using non-professional performers who always shared in the shows' conception as well as their execution. He also staged what might be called "home theatre", tabletop adaptations of The Hunting of the Snark and The Selfish Giant, performed in people's homes for audiences of a dozen or so.
Habicht (director of Woodenhead - in which Broadhead played Hugo, the rubbish dump boss - and the post-bogan slice-of-life Kaikohe Demolition) describes this film in a secondary title as "a documentary performed by Warwick Broadhead" and that's apt: before the camera, the artist recalls, re-enacts, re-interprets and wrestles with episodes of his own life. Often he adopts alter egos for the purpose: there's a marvellous moment when he says: "I was in one of Warwick Broadhead's shows - I couldn't understand it, but the costumes were great". But there are also intensely first-person revelatory monologues about growing up in a brick house in Mt Roskill, about family tragedies and the guilt and pain they left behind.
The film provides a great glimpse into the nature of Broadhead's performances, which were never so much technically showy as examples of lateral leaps of imagination - a handbag becomes a hat; a standard lamp a flute - but it is predominantly a glimpse into the heart and soul of a rather special man. Fascinating, obscure and unusual.
Peter Calder
New Links!
Look out for articles in latest Art N.Z. and Art News Magazines.
Florian interviewed about directing.
Florian interviewed on Breakfast Television
Flicks Review by Andreas Heinemann
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
To pigeonhole Florian Habicht's Rubbings From A Live Man as a documentary does it a disservice, encouraging preconceptions of an objective film based around clearly demonstrated facts. Instead, it is a kaleidoscopic blend of doco and the unashamedly dramatic that re-imagines the life of noted local thespian Warwick Broadhead, performing on camera for the first time. His unique life is given a fittingly unconventional onscreen form, one that depending on your cinematic persuasions you will find either poetic or pretentious.
Broadhead's story extends from rural New Zealand to hippy San Francisco. Key moments are re-enacted through a string of symbolic theatre performances featuring him as the central performer, playing everyone from himself to God, that run the gamut from kitschy to surreal. Not all of these are entirely successful but the best are genuinely profound moments. It's an esoteric, potentially artificial approach given real heart by Broadhead who publicly bares his soul and relives his greatest pains, ultimately seeming to achieve a level of catharsis. His performances are so deeply impassioned that you feel it is only through them that he can truly tell his story.
However, the film never lets you forget this - that he is an actor performing in front of a camera. Whilst Broadhead re-imagines his life as dramatic spectacles, Habicht strips way the documentary process to its nuts and bolts. The self-aware inclusion of rehearsals and crew members works like behind the scenes footage and reminds you that both the film and the story it tells are creative constructs rather than absolute truths. This creates an absorbing dynamic between Broadhead and the audience, whereby you are drawn in and empathise with him, yet at the same time stay at arms length trying to decipher the film's more cryptic elements.
A film as experimental as this is not meant to appeal to everybody. Rubbings From a Live Man is a conceptually bold yet genuinely moving feast for the artistically inclined mind.
6 November 2008
User Comments from Flicks.co.nz
Colorful.
Colorful, uncompromised, human, deep, lucid. Splendid. We are very proud of Florian and his whole team. A wonderful extraordinary work of art this film. Deserved the standing ovation at the film festival!
By Lies
MOVING image
"Life is sad, but beautiful". Each progressive scene embossed yet another mark in my emotional memory. If i were blind, deaf and dumb, i would still have perceived the stong feelings that the film ignited within the other audience members, simply by the smells. Overpowering the smells of popcorn were the smells of sweat, tears, and dribbling laughter. But thank God for my eyes and ears, as Habicht's films are always an audio visual feast! Delicious!!!
By Sebastian
Hybrid brilliance..
A beautiful innovation of documentary form (we're not in Kaikohe anymore Toto...) language and style, which also packs a quite visceral emotional wallop; this quietly creeps in by stealth from the wings of the stunningly re-staged & re-imagined perfomances & moments of Warwick and his alter-ego's lives.
By Marten
This is the film..
..that broke my heart and at the same time, gave the strength to keep going!
By T