
30 May 2017

Muck! men sen då - Kenneth Viken?
For almost half of his life, Kenneth Viken has been in prison, and he does not know how many times he has been released, only to soon return . In January 2016 he is released again.

Two years ago Guyon Espiner stopped drinking. Now, the award-winning journalist and podcast-maker has made a documentary about New Zealand's drinking culture and the alcohol industry.

Himself
Himself

Himself
Himself
Herself

30 May 2017

For almost half of his life, Kenneth Viken has been in prison, and he does not know how many times he has been released, only to soon return . In January 2016 he is released again.

19 May 2017

Max Gimblett: Original Mind documents the life and process of eccentric, creative genius Max Gimblett. One of New Zealand’s most successful and internationally prominent living painters, Gimblett has been working in America since 1962. The filmmakers spent a week in Gimblett’s Soho loft where he and his devoted studio assistants generously revealed the techniques and philosophy behind his beautiful art.

31 Jul 2014

In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our greenhouse gas emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why.

08 Jun 2020

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.
23 Feb 2007
No overview found

01 Jan 1978

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

13 Jul 2014

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.

09 Jan 2020

Alcohol: No substance in the world seems so familiar to us and is so incredibly diverse in its effect. Alcohol is available everywhere and this particular molecule has the power to affect all 200 billion neurons of our human brain in completely different ways. But hardly anyone calls alcohol a drug despite its psychoactive and cell-destroying effect. Why do we tolerate the death of three million people every year? Have we turned a blind eye to the dangers and risks for thousands of years? What role does the powerful alcohol industry play with an annual turnover of 1.2 trillion euros in this on-going concealment? The author, who himself enjoys having a drink, looks into the question why we drink at all, what alcohol does to us and to what extent the alcohol industry influences society and politics.

17 Oct 2007

The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba

25 Oct 2007

The true-life story of a Harlem's notorious Nicky Barnes, a junkie turned multimillionaire drug-lord. Follow his life story from his rough childhood to the last days of his life.

27 Jul 2014

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.

31 May 2007

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

18 Apr 1996

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”.

12 Jul 2002

The story of unemployment in New Zealand and In A Land of Plenty is an exploration of just that; it takes as its starting point the consensus from The Depression onwards that Godzone economic policy should focus on achieving full employment, and explores how this was radically shifted by the 1984 Labour government. Director Alister Barry's perspective is clear, as he trains a humanist lens on ‘Rogernomics' to argue for the policy's negative effects on society, as a new poverty-stricken underclass developed.

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.

11 Oct 1977

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

10 Oct 1975

A visual essay on contemporary Kiwi architecture.

01 Jan 2017

Southern New Zealand is home to an incredible diversity of penguins; each species has its mode of reproduction, its habits of brooding and teaching its young.

01 Jun 2025

Follow the charming Aotearoa New Zealand singer-songwriter on a life-changing journey of self-exploration as he embraces his roots and creates his first album in te reo Māori.

16 Feb 2001

In 1999, the largely conservative Wairarapa district in New Zealand elected a former cabaret performer/actress named Georgina Beyer to the country's House of Parliament -- a seemingly unremarkable event in that country's history except for the fact that Beyer is a transsexual and may very well be the first transsexual in the world to be elected to a national office. In their 2002 biographical documentary Georgie Girl, co-directors Peter Wells and Annie Goldson highlight the popular Member of Parliament's rapid rise through local government to prominence in the New Zealand national government.