Taking Back Our Beach

A bold reveal of a rose tattoo opens this 1980 documentary on tattooing in New Zealand. The potted history includes visits to tattoo parlours on K' Road and Hastings, and the studios of industry legends Steve Johnson and Roger Ingerton. Tattooists discuss public stigma, people's reasons for getting inked, and popular designs: sailors, serpents, swallows and tā moko. Made for documentary slot Contact, Skin Pics chronicles a time when "folk art has become high art".

In 1973 Alister Barry joined the crew of a protest boat (The Fri) to Mururoa Atoll, where the French Government were testing nuclear weapons. Barry records the assembly of the crew, the long journey from Northland, and their reception in the test zone; when The Fri was boarded and impounded by French military he had to hide his camera in a barrel of oranges.

Seeing is to painting what listening is to politics. Survival as an artist demands both. Paint Until Dawn is a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan (1927-1999), who painted all night to push the limits of vision. His life and thought reveal a correlation between art and activism through an interesting angle: the creative process itself.

Who is driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand, and why? Fire and Fury is a Stuff Circuit investigation into disinformation in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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.

Delegates and workers discuss the issues that effect the Timberworkers’ Union, the reasons for the formation of the Combined Council of Timber Workers Delegates (CCD) and their industrial action.

On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 went down as it was leaving Iranian air space. All 176 people on board were killed, many of them Iranian Canadians. For weeks Iranian authorities vociferously denied responsibility, but foreign governments and agencies were certain the plane was shot down by Iranian military, a fact Iran’s government eventually admitted. There were no answers as to why the plane was fired on or even why it was allowed to take off, since hostilities had broken out in the region in preceding days.

With a team of the world's foremost historic and marine experts as well as friend Bill Paxton, James Cameron embarks on an unscripted adventure back to the wreck of the Titanic where nearly 1,500 souls lost their lives almost a century ago.

Memorias de un naufragio

Three years in the making in conjunction with the BBC. Using never seen before home movies, photos and eye witness accounts - this is the inside story of the world's biggest motorsport disaster.

The "Herzogin Cecilie" flew before the wind; she was considered the fastest windjammer of her day. Launched by Rickmers boatyard in 1902, the four-masted training barquentine carried saltpeter from Chile and wheat from Australia to Europe. She won the "great grain race" between Down Under and Europe a total of eight times for her Finnish owner Gustaf Erikson. In 1936, she completed the voyage between Wallaroo in South Australia and the English port of Falmouth in just 86 days. But she was never to make it back to her home port. Leaving Falmouth in rough seas and a dense fog, she ran into cliffs and started taking on water. The barque's last trip was also the honeymoon of captain Sven Erikson and his new bride, journalist and writer Pamela Bourne. Under the watchful eye of the international press, they undertook incredible efforts to save the ship.

Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.

The sinking of the Lusitania and the impact it had in determining the fate of World War I is widely known. But few know the stories of the passengers and crew aboard the doomed luxury liner, or the German commander who ordered the deadly attack on May 7, 1915. Follow the final voyage of the massive ship, from her celebrated exit from New York's Pier 54 to her 18-minute plummet off the coast of Ireland. Through firsthand accounts, meet the men, women, and children who rode the "Greyhound of the Seas" into a war zone, and into history.

The enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.

For 70 years, the sudden sinking of the mighty British ship Britannic - larger than the sister ship Titanic - has been shrouded in mystery. Jacques Cousteau reveals the full story of November 21, 1916 when, on her sixth journey as a hospital ship, Britannic exploded and sank into the Aegean Sea.

A documentary portrait of the pioneering indigenous filmmaker and activist Merata Mita and an intimate tribute from a son about his mother that delves into the life of the first woman from an Indigenous Nation to solely direct a film anywhere in the world. Known as the grandmother of Indigenous cinema, Merata’s independent political documentaries of the 1970s and 80s highlighted injustices for Māori people and often divided the country. Mita was fearless in her life, her activism and her art. Chronicling the director’s journey to decolonize the film and television screens of New Zealand and the world, the film documents her work, her early struggles with her family and her drive for social justice that often proved personally dangerous.

This is the story of a Greek physician who collects pendants and bracelets. This is the story of an Italian woman who has been fighting for 15 years to «make bodies talk.» This is the story of those who watch over the forgotten migrants.

Documentary about the influential New Zealand indie label Flying Nun Records.

Discover the stunning locations of New Zealand with the cast and crew of The Hobbit Trilogy.

Women talk about the circumstances that drove them to seek illegal abortions and the often traumatic result. Interwoven with historical photographs and newsreel footage, the stories expose how the reality of women's lives were counterposed to what was socially and morally expected of them.