New Zealand Documentary Love, Speed & Loss To Screen At Leading Film Festival
LOVE, SPEED and LOSS, a documentary profile of visionary New Zealand motorcycle designer and racer Kim Newcombe has been
selected to feature at a leading international documentary film festival in Melbourne on February 19th.
Beginning Saturday 11 February and running until Tuesday 21 February 2006, Real Life on Film is an annual film festival
and market for documentaries selected from Commonwealth countries. This year’s festival coincides with the Commonwealth
Games and is presented by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image as an exclusive film as part of the Games cultural
programme.
Love, Speed and Loss is among a schedule of films screening from a wide range of Commonwealth countries, including
Australia and the United Kingdom that organizers say will celebrate the richness and diversity of the Commonwealth as a
political and social entity.
The topic of the documentary, motorcycle engineer and racer Kim Newcombe, was the first New Zealander to win a
prestigious 500cc World Grand Motorcycle Prix. He did this in 1973 on a bike he built himself using a German Konig
marine outboard engine. He was assisted by Melbourne engineer Rod Tingate who has spent thirty years building a replica
of the original Konig machine.
Real Life on Film have selected the documentary for the Melbourne screening citing director Justin Pemberton’s poetic
use of Super 8 footage shot by Kim’s wife, Janeen, as the young couple blazed a trail on the European racing circuit in
the early 1970s prior to Newcombe’s tragic death at English race circuit Silverstone late in 1973.
In New Zealand, Love, Speed and Loss screened as part of the 2005 Auckland Film Festival and is scheduled to screen on
TV3 later this year and will begin a brief theatrical release at Rialto Newmarket in Auckland commencing Waitangi Day
February 6th.