The 34th Annual New Zealand Film Festival with its huge menu of foreign and kiwi films, including some like 'U Tu Mama Tambien' that attract protest, may seem like a secular celebration. But for Stuart Vogel, the church's resident Auckland film buff, the festival offered depth for a Christian audience. Stuart says the challenge of the Festival is to learn how to interpret films and decide what is worth watching and why. These are his picks of what's worth watching out for either on general or special release, DVD or video.

Surprisingly perhaps, the festival often shows films, which depict complex Christian themes and issues of faith. 'Molokai: the story of Father Damien,' for example, portrays the life of a Belgian priest who worked among lepers in Hawaii in the 1870s. He brought many lepers to Christ, but in so doing upset the prestige conscious church and state authorities. Similarly, Amen (Eyewitness) tells the story of the man who invented Zyklon B gas to kill insects. When the Nazis begin using it to kill people in concentration camps, he contacts a Jesuit priest with Vatican connections. The dilemma in both films is how to remain loyal to the Church when its leaders refuse to stand up for what is right.

A hit at the festival was 'Bend It Like Beckham,' the story of an Anglo-Indian girl growing up in England. She adores David Beckham, who her traditional Asian minded parents can barely tolerate. However, they erupt when she joins the local girls' soccer team and boil over when she gets good at it. This is a fun, well acted film to take the kids or youth group to and to discuss multi-cultural issues, family relationships, teenagers and feminism, particularly over (what else after a British film) fish and chips.

A personal highlight this year was Disney's 'Unseen Treasures 1929-1950.' This collection of previously unseen footage from Disney studios included a scene from Snow White that in 1937 was considered too scary for kids to see. How times have changed. The scene in which Bambi's mother dies from a hunter's bullet was included in that film however and helps children - brilliantly I believe - to cope with grief sensitively and well.

A section, (Clare de Lune) of Disney's classic film Fantasia (1941) which was not originally included, has been found and restored. Fantasia is an interpretation in animation of 8 pieces of classical music. The most famous sequence is Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which Mickey Mouse gets carried away with his new found, magical powers. It is a marvelous depiction of what happens when someone has more power than wisdom. It is just as poignant today as in 1941.

Initially, however Fantasia flopped, perhaps because lovers of classical music didn't like Dukas' music getting the Mickey Mouse treatment. Nor did they know what to make of cartoons of hippos and alligators dancing to Ponchielli's great ballet music, the Dance of the Hours.

Disney was using an imaginative new art form - animation - to open up and interpret the beauty and power of classical music to a new generation. The restored and completed version of Fantasia is now available on DVD and ready to do it again. Youngsters bought up on TV "japanimation" like Pokemon might be amazed and delighted.

At its best, the Film Festival can depict truth, beauty and justice with imagination and power. Maybe the Church can learn from that.