Will Bastion returns home from the army after an absence of 20 years to bury his father, the former chief of thee Maori tribe, Ngati Kaipuku. The eldest son, he is reluctant to inherit his fathers role, so it is taken more willingly by his younger brother, Kahu. Kahu is the leader of a band of drug dealers and trouble-makers who ride horses through the middle of town, wrecking peoples gardens. Under the guise of refusal of a land settlement, Kahu makes a large marijuana deal with some murdering city folk. Will must choose between loyalty for his brother and his father, Maori tradition, and contemporary financial issues.
The father of a deeply troubled household that endured tragedy both from without and within, seeks to reconcile with his youngest daughter by making a journey to both symbolically and culturally lay the family "ghosts" to rest.
A man wakes up in an endless white void, unable to remember how he got there, he soon encounters an A.I. who takes the man through old memories of himself until he realizes his tragic purpose in the white room.
This short follows Joe Warbrick (Calvin Tuteao), captain of the New Zealand Natives rugby team, as he tries to rouse his battle-weary players to head unto the breach once more, for a test against England. It’s midwinter during the trailblazing 1888-89 tour (17 months and a staggering 107 matches) that left a black jersey and silver fern legacy. In a changing room that resembles a casualty ward, Warbrick draws breath and leads a stirring haka. Made by brothers Pere and Meihana Durie, Warbrick inspired the All Blacks the day before a 33-6 demolition of Australia in 2009.
When a young fakaleiti falls in love at St Valentine’s Highschool, she must navigate her way through a world of intolerance and bigotry to find happiness - in an unexpected place.
In 1916, the New Zealand Government secretly shipped 14 of the country's most outspoken conscientious objectors to the Western Front in an attempt to convert, silence, or quite possibly kill them. This is their story.
In the wake of the loss of his beloved wife, a rural community rallies around a farmer to help him deal with his grief.
In a sweeping tale that spans 1000 years and multiple generations – from the distant past to the 19th century, the present day and a strange, dystopian future – this landmark collection traces the collective histories of Indigenous peoples across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Diverse in perspective, content and form, traversing the terrain of grief, love and dispossession, they each bear witness to these cultures’ ongoing struggles against patriarchy, colonialism and racism.
The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
This program provides, through 1st hand accounts & contemporary films & photographs, a rare insight into what really happened. Together with meticulously researched stories, it provides a unique analysis of the Gallipoli campaign, including never-seen before interviews with the last 10 Gallipoli Anzacs, rare film footage showing the beach & trenches at Gallipoli.
The Gallipoli campaign of World War I was so controversial & devastating, it changed the face of battle forever. Using diaries, letters, photographs and memoirs, acclaimed director, Tolga Ornek, traces the personal journeys of Australian, New Zealand, British and Turkish soldiers, from innocence and patriotism to hardship and heartbreak.
Set in 1965, a true story of one man’s struggle to bring rock music to a nation, an iconic New Zealand story with a universal ‘David and Goliath’ theme. The youth will find it incredible this actually happened and existed as part of New Zealand society in the 1960′s. It’s a titanic struggle for freedom and ‘the choice to choose’.
Two brothers take their father into the city for the weekend for a rugby game and a night on the town. However, the old man dies in their hotel and the boys need to smuggle his body back to their farm and make it appear that he died there to satisfy a clause in his will or else they won't inherit the property.
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
In November 1947 forty-one people died in a massive blaze that gutted the huge Ballantynes Department Store complex in the heart of Christchurch’s business district. This is the tragic story of New Zealand’s worst fire disaster.
Ordinary people find extraordinary courage in the face of madness. On 13–14 November 1990 that madness came to Aramoana, a small New Zealand seaside town, in the form of a lone gunman with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle. As he stalked his victims the terrified and confused residents were trapped for 24 hours while a handful of under-resourced and under-armed local policemen risked their lives trying to find him and save the survivors. Based on true events.
Lost somewhere over the Pacific in a single-engine Cessna with low fuel, a pilot (Scott Bakula) awaits rescue.
A baby is washed up on a Pacific Island and is adopted by a childless woman. The tribal priest takes an instant dislike to the child, proclaiming him a demon. The child is deaf and mute and therefore excluded from hunting with the other young men. Out of loneliness, he befriends a white turtle. When a drought befalls the island, the priest blames the silent one. When the chief protects the boy, the priest plots the chiefs' downfall.
An intimate story set during the 1860s in which a young Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonization of New Zealand.
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.