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Curated by the NZ On Screen Team
This collection brings together 24 titles covering Kiwis at war. Iconic documentaries and films tell stories of terrible cost, heroism and brotherhood. Each title raises fundamental questions about our identity. Dr Chris Pugsley muses, “It is sobering to think that in the first half of the 20th Century the big OE for most New Zealanders was going to war.”
In director James Cunningham's award-winning short film, two Kiwi soldiers find a baby in a muddy WWI trench. For Paddy the find will lead to redemption amidst the hell of war. CGI evokes a bleak Western Front landscape on which the (motion-captured, 3D-animated) drama unfolds.
It’s Anzac Day 1966 and ex-serviceman and farmer Bill (Peter Vere-Jones) finds his usual traditions disrupted by a visit from his son Peter (Michael Hurst), whose pacifist beliefs bring the family’s repressed antagonisms boiling to the surface in this confronting TV drama.
The Call Up chronicles the final 48 hours before three UN Peacekeepers head off to Bosnia. Armed with a top notch cast (Marton Csokas, Joel Tobeck, Calvin Tuteao) the David Blyth-directed drama delves into the mixed emotions of heading into the fray: the impact on the soldiers and those left behind.
In 2007 Corporal Willie Apiata, of the NZ Army’s SAS, was awarded the Victoria Cross for carrying a wounded soldier to safety while under fire in Afghanistan. This doco had exclusive access to the shy solider as he struggles with sudden celebrity, and the need to keep the work of the SAS covert.
Gaylene Preston’s feature was inspired by her parents’ life during wartime. Preston’s father Ed (Goodbye Pork Pie’s Tony Barry) remembers his WWII story, which is recreated with Martin Henderson as his younger self and Preston’s daughter Chelsie playing her grandmother Tui: the wife back home.
This doco looks at the life of East Coast-born Moana Ngārimu, the sole recipient from the Māori Battalion to be awarded the Victoria Cross during WWII. He was killed on 27th March 1943, after taking then defending overnight a hilltop position (and injured men) in Tunisia. He was 24.
This classic newsreel was the first of the war information films made for the Weekly Review series; it was also the first National Film Unit production. The film follows Kiwi soldiers as they leave to fight, motivated to prove Adolf wrong (he’d described them as "poor deluded country lads"!).
Porokoru Patapu (John) Pohe was the first Māori pilot in the RNZAF. Nicknamed 'Lucky Johnny', he was a WWII hero who flew 22 missions. This excerpt sees a captured Pohe plotting the legendary 'Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III. Listener reviewer Diana Wichtel called it "a terrific yarn".
In Gaylene Preston's moving documentary, seven elderly women recall their personal experiences of World War II. Two of the interviews are featured here: Flo Small and Mabel Waititi. LA Times' Kevin Thomas enthused that Preston takes “a simple idea and turns it into a rich, universal experience”.
This doco goes behind the scenes of director Gaylene Preston’s account of her parents’ wartime experiences: Preston reveals that actor Tony Barry’s distinctive voice is almost a carbon copy of her father Ed’s; and Chelsie Preston Crayford talks about portraying her own grandmother.
This documentary gave NZ viewers, for the first time, a Turkish view of the Gallipoli story. Produced for TVNZ and Turkish TV, it focuses on four young people, two Turks and two New Zealanders, descended from Gallipoli veterans, as they explore the grim reality of their ancestors’ experience.
Six Māori Battalion soldiers camped in Italian ruins wait for night to fall. In the silence the bros-in-arms distract themselves with jokes before a tohu (sign) brings them back to reality. Directed by Oscar-nominated Taika Waititi it won international acclaim: honourable mention at Sundance and a special jury prize at Berlin.
The story of the New Zealand Army's (28th) Māori Battalion, this Tainui Stephens documentary tells the stories of five men who served with the unit. Narration (by actor George Henare), remembrances, visits to historic sites, archival footage, create a stirring screen tribute.
This seminal 1984 documentary tells the stories of the New Zealand soldiers who were part of the identity-defining Gallipoli campaign in World War I. In the ill-fated mission to take a piece of Turkish coastline, 2721 New Zealanders died with 4752 wounded. It won a Feltex Award for Best Documentary.
Actor Wi Kuki Kaa plays a Vietnam War veteran who is dislocated by his war experience and homeless. A moving short film about a man jolted to find his turangawaewae and the whanau that helps him get there. Directed by Peter Burger, it was selected for Critics' Week at Cannes (2003).
Actor Robyn Malcolm visits the towns of Passchendaele and Ypres in Belgium - near the cemetery where her great uncle, Private George Salmond, is buried, and reflects on his sacrifice on foreign whenua. Salmond, an ANZAC signaler, was among the 18,500 New Zealand casualties of World War I.
A live broadcast (for TV One) of the Anzac Day dawn service at Waikumete Cemetery. This service commemorates all service personnel who have served overseas for New Zealand. Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey speaks, Returned Services Association members, politicians and the public lay tributes.
This newsreel features footage of Māori Battalion solders returning from WWII to Wellington Harbour. The soldiers are greeted with a huge powhiri and at the ensuing hakari at Porirua marae the kaimoana and pia flow freely. The reel then follows men returning home in Kuku and Ngaruawahia.
Director David Blyth chronicles the times at war of his bossy yet personable grandad and WWI veteran, Lawrence ‘Curly' Blyth, who died in 2001, aged 105. Curly fought on the Western Front and helped liberate the town of Le Quesnoy from German forces, winning the French Legion of Honour.
An annual television event from the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the National War Memorial in Wellington. Diplomats from all over the world lay wreaths, along with the Governor General and politicians. Broadcaster Ian Johnstone provides context via a knowledgeable and unobtrusive commentary.
A profile of the Returned Services Association on its fiftieth anniversary, taken from 1960s current affairs show Compass. The RSA’s varied roles include welfare, watchdog, and keeper of the flame. Curios include the Taumaranui RSA bar which makes a good return in a town that is officially dry.
Kiwis have gone to war in their thousands, and many have not returned, from the horrendous loss of life at Gallipoli to the decimation of the Māori Battalion. This doco explores the experiences of soldiers, and the families who waited at home. It also examines the long tradition of protest against war.
During WWII the Post Office photographed letters, enabling mass mailing to soldiers via rolls of film. Post Office worker Ngaire (Yvette Reid) deals with mail for soldiers serving overseas. In this short writer-director Paolo Rotondo explores how war, death and distance affect relationships.
This Gaylene Preston-directed doco follows a "mob of veterans" (the oldest is 95) on a 2006 trip to unveil a war memorial in London's Hyde Park honouring NZ's service in war alongside Britain. For many of the elderly vets it is their second OE; they remember war stories and lost mates, and endure airport drudgery and jet-lag.
Between 1964 - 1972, 4,000 young Kiwis volunteered for service in Vietnam. Itching to get out into the world, the OE thrills were soon replaced by the horrors of war. Worse, they returned home to an angry public. This documentary lets the soldiers tell their stories for the first time.
Political cartoonist Malcolm Evans tells his father's story of war through his letters and diaries, and through interviews. Major Hilary Evans was a World War II prisoner of war who escaped and lived rough in Italy's hills and mountains to avoid recapture.
Vietnam veteran Frank Metcalfe revisits the country he served in 35 years before as a young officer. This time accompanied by his son, soldier-turned-producer Matthew Metcalfe, he recollects, “I look at this place, and I can’t help but think what on earth were we doing.”
The historian and Te Ara general editor muses on memory, mourning and identity, and asks what the collection says about 'Anzac'. Read More >
Military historian Dr Chris Pugsley reflects on Anzac on screen: “[this collection] raises more questions than it answers, and so it should”. Read More >
Broadcaster Ian Johnstone considers: “that the responsibility for asking people to serve and fight, and perhaps die, belongs to all of us”. Read More >
NZ On Screen would like to thank TVNZ, TVNZ Archives, Archives New Zealand, NZ Film Commission, the producers and production companies, colleagues and contributors who helped with the compilation of this Anzac Collection. We also wish to acknowledge the many New Zealanders these titles honour.
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The ONYAs 2010 & 2011
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Qantas Media Awards 2009
NZ ON SCREEN 2012
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