New Zealand, 2011

Producer: Richard Riddiford
Photography: Max Ensor
Editor: Peter Roberts
Sound: India Caldwell
Music: Lydia Lipkowska

With: Rossano Fan, Lisa Fan Joe, Mary Sue

"Rossano Fan had the lofty ambition to be a world famous architect, an equal to Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, but fetched up instead in a market garden in Levin. His father, Fan Chi Hung, was a leading architect in Communist China who fell foul of the Cultural Revolution. Rossano married into the family of a market gardener and moved toNew Zealandin 1963. He had little interest in his new family business, focusing his attention on his enthusiasm for architecture. He was able to design a small number of distinctive and innovative houses in theWellingtonregion, and this film sees him return to visit them and their appreciative occupants. When design work dried up, Rossano’s focus shifted somewhat obsessively to painting. Though Rossano’s account of his own life is sharply counterpointed with more prosaic accounts from his exhausted wife and daughter, Richard Riddiford’s documentary takes us deep into the frenetic mind of an idiosyncratic nonconformist who treads a tricky line between delusion and brilliance." — New Zealand Film Festival 2011

Every Friday at 12.15pm, from 17 August until
5 October, come in for homemade soup and a choice selection of films. Cinema condensed to fit into your lunch break.

Download the complete 2012 Soup and a Seat season here (pdf)