The first of the month saw another first for the  Barbican Arts Centre, nestling in the City of London, as it hosted the first New Zealand Film Festival in its capacious Cinema 1 (from 1-3 July, 2011). Timed to coincide with the City of London's arts festival which takes Oceania as its focus for a continuing season of recitals,lectures and large-scale concerts in a number of historic venues, the opening night was spectacularly successful with a memorable pre-film reception in the Barbican's ...

London's equivalent to Hollywood's Academy is called-for short- BAFTA and it occupies luxurious premises on the historic Piccadilly street (not to be confused with the nearby Piccadilly Circus, which has nothing to do with P.T.Barnum) in the heart of the British capital. For many years it was considered a rather staid place and organisation, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, but in recent years after some interior revamping and probably thanks to some lively new personnel on the...