Feast Your Eyes

Our first event of this year’s Wellington On A Plate is a variation on the Roxy Cinema’s perennial favourite, Eat The Film. This version has been rechristened as Feast Your Eyes. This time we’re seeing Hunt For The Wilderpeople, the New Zealand cult film from last year. Sounds like fun!

We arrived at the Roxy in plenty of time for the 2pm start, and waited patiently in the upstairs lounge…because this is being shown in the main cinema. How are they going to serve hundreds of people food and drinks in the main cinema? Well, they’ve changed up the format a bit: instead of serving individual foods at opportune moments in the film, they decided to serve a hāngi at the beginning, and allowed us to help ourselves to beers and soft drinks from the bar throughout the film. As we had to drive and/or sing later in the day, we didn’t overindulge on this.

The film was introduced by Ray Letoa, barman and mixologist at The Roxy. He explained his concept for the event, and we were watching the film though a screen of freshly-picked leaves and bushes.

If you’ve not seen HFTW before, well, you really should. It’s a film about an urban Maori boy in foster care, who, for reasons that will become apparent, goes on the run in the bush. It’s very funny. It’s also the highest grossing New Zealand film to date (LOTR and The Hobbit films don’t count as they’re not defined as New Zealand films).