Wildcat: The Struggle for Democracy in the New Zealand Timberworkers' Union

Textile workers recall with pride the long- suppressed story of the General Textile Strike of 1934 when 500,000 Southern mill laborers walked off their jobs.

An overview of one of the greatest disasters of the first World War WWI - the Dardanelles Campaign at Gallipoli, Turkey.

Quest for the Ring

Someone Else’s Country looks critically at the radical economic changes implemented by the 1984 Labour Government - where privatisation of state assets was part of a wider agenda that sought to remake New Zealand as a model free market state. The trickle-down ‘Rogernomics’ rhetoric warned of no gain without pain, and here the theory is counterpointed by the social effects (redundant workers, Post Office closures). Made by Alister Barry in 1996 when the effects were raw, the film draws extensively on archive footage and interviews with key “witnesses to history”.

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

An explosion in one of the largest chemical plants in Europe, the Petrochemical complex in Tarragona, triggers the labour struggle of a group of workers who demand what is fair for everyone.

On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours 11 ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to uncover the mystery of how a jet could fly into a mountain in broad daylight. Did the airline have a secret it wanted to bury? This film tells the story of four New Zealand police officers who went to Antarctica as part of the police operation to recover the victims of the crash. Set in the beautiful yet hostile environment of Antarctica, this is the emotional and compelling true story of an extraordinary police operation.

A close examination of the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption of 2019 in which 22 lives were lost, the film viscerally recounts a day when ordinary people were called upon to do extraordinary things, placing this tragic event within the larger context of nature, resilience, and the power of our shared humanity.

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

Documentary about the nurses' strike in Finland on autumn 2007.

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.

Brothers on the Line explores the extraordinary journey of the Reuther brothers – Walter, Roy, and Victor – union organizers whose unshakeable devotion led an army of workers into an epic human rights struggle.

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

A documentary centered on the union formed by Bolivian farmers in response to their government's (which was urged by the U.S.) effort eradicate coca crops, and the man who would come to represent them, Evo Morales.

A Lord of the Rings tour guide in New Zealand processes his grief in a wonderful way.

A documentary about the history of settler groups that came to New Zealand from Europe.

A visual essay on contemporary Kiwi architecture.

A short documentary about freestyle skiing made for the New Zealand Tourist and Publicity Department.