
01 Jan 1995

Le Cinéma de grand-père
Remarkable life story of Henri Diamant-Berger, a director and screenwriter whose devotion to cinema led him to collaborate with some of the greatest actors and filmmakers of his time.
Actor Sam Neill discusses New Zealand film and his own experiences within and without.

Narrator / Host

01 Jan 1995

Remarkable life story of Henri Diamant-Berger, a director and screenwriter whose devotion to cinema led him to collaborate with some of the greatest actors and filmmakers of his time.

31 Dec 2003

Documentary illustrating the birth of sound cinema.

04 Sep 2022

An inventive remembrance of the impact of the Hollywood blacklist on two American classics, rendered as a visually mesmerizing dialogue between Carl Foreman and Elia Kazan.

30 Jan 2019

Fifty years after its release, the special effects makeup team behind Planet of the Apes reflect on making the iconic film.

01 Nov 2002

The history of Frankenstein's journey from novel to stage to screen to icon.

08 Jun 1983

Examines the early 1980s Hong Kong filmmaking community. Tony Rayns interviews some of the new generation of filmmakers and figures from the wider film culture.

16 Dec 2024

In the summer of 1975, the young director Steven Spielberg set new standards for cinema worldwide with an oversized shark bite, a plastic shark fin and an unmistakable two-note main theme composed by John Williams. With the horror from the deep, a man-eating, gigantic great white shark, the film of the same name became a similarly traumatic reference as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho": it triggered lasting primal fears across generations. On the beaches of the world, there was clearly a "before" and an "after". Steven Spielberg, who was only 28 at the time, not only set new standards for the thriller genre, but also hid his biting criticism of US capitalism in the 1970s behind it.

17 Apr 2011

Operation 8 examines the so-called 'anti-terror' raids that took place around New Zealand on October 15, 2007 - asking how and why they took place and at what cost to those targeted.

01 Jan 1992

A lyrical and nostalgic analysis of how Casablanca, the mythical film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942, has influenced both film history and pop culture.

20 Oct 2022

Olympic Champion, Kiwi Icon, Tongan Leader, Orphan, Mother...winning was just part of the journey.

01 Jan 1981

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.

13 Sep 2019

A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.

29 May 2014

A documentary about film producer Hal Roach.

26 Nov 2019

A feature-length documentary about the film Galaxy Quest and its legacy, celebrating its milestone 20th anniversary.

01 Aug 2014

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

16 May 2021

Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.

20 Apr 2010

A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.

27 Oct 2022

The life and professional career of the Spanish filmmaker Florián Rey (1894-1962), a brilliant artist who began his career in silent films and had great commercial success during the Second Republic (1931-1936): a journey to the early days of Spanish cinema.

30 Jul 2005

A documentary about the threat posed to New Zealand's Kaipara Harbour by rapacious commercial fishing and development.

08 Nov 2019

Tucumán, Argentina, 1965. Three years before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released, director Ofelio Linares Montt shot Zombies in the Sugar Cane Field, which turned out to be both a horror film and a political statement. It was a success in the US, but could not be shown in Argentina due to Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship, and was eventually lost. Writer and researcher Luciano Saracino embarks on the search for the origins of this cursed work.