This National Film Unit film visits Christchurch roughly four years before the main event, to promote the city’s readiness to host the Commonwealth Games. A comical potted history of New Zealand precedes a montage of young women cycling around Canterbury environs and a split screen catalogue of NZ tourist attractions, before getting into a survey of the venues. As the opening demonstrates, “there’s always a traditional welcome awaiting our friends!” In 1973 the NFU completed a second film called Christchurch 74, before covering the games themselves in the feature-length Games 74. 

One of a trio of late 90s Kiwi crime-based pilots, Street Legal was the only one that would  successfully spawn a series - four series, in fact (though Kevin Smith vehicle Lawless saw two further tele-movies). The Street Legal pilot provides a stylish big city template for the show to come, as Auckland criminal lawyer David Silesi (Jay Laga-aia) enlists the help of an over- enthusiastic journalist (Sara Wiseman) in the hope of winning an out-of-court settlement over a hit and run case. Meanwhile Silesi's lawyer girlfriend smells something fishy - with good reason.

It's the first semi-final in the first series of this stand-up comedy talent quest presented by Jeremy and Nigel Corbett (who assert their edgy, early 90s credentials with a running gag about Nirvana). Judges Ian Harcourt, Theresa Healey and Strawpeople's Mark Tierney preside over a line-up comprising a very composed Michele A'Court, mildcore rappers Hip Hips, The Back Garden, Jo Randerson (in angry-ish feminist mode), a particularly hirsute Jon Bridges and eventual winner Late Night Mike (with Harcourt generating as many laughs as the contestants).

Auckland's Massive Company began in 1998 as a youth theatre group, committed to developing multicultural talent. Sons for the Road records a big moment in their evolution: performing at London's Royal Court Theatre, whose long history includes launching another piece of cross-cultural fertilisation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Their play is The Sons of Charlie Paora, a tale of rugby players and troubled male identity developed by Massive and UK writer Lennie James (who would later join the cast of hit The Walking Dead). The Independent called the play "wonderfully engaging".

The first instalment of this two part documentary chronicles the effects of Christchurch’s September 2010 earthquake on a variety of everyday people. They have seen damage to their city they would never have imagined, houses have been destroyed, liquefaction has entered their vocabulary and the ground beneath their feet can no longer be trusted. Miraculously, there has been no loss of life. As seismologists seek to understand what happened, the interviewees tentatively rebuild disrupted lives, but the fatal quakes of 22 February cruelly derail that recovery.

This short film follows 14-year-old George (Norissa Taia) who has to find her own way to celebrate her birthday when everyone else forgets it. But solace comes from an unexpected place. The film marked director Reina Webster-Iti’s thesis project for her Master of Fine Arts degree at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (the Fulbright scholar was the first Kiwi to study film directing there). Little Things won a Special Mention at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, while young actor Norissa Taia was nominated for an NZ Screen Award. The casting is by Whale Rider's Diana Rowan.

On October 15 2007, citing evidence of guerilla camps involving firearms training, police raided 60 houses across NZ, many of them in Ruatoki, near Whakatāne. In production for almost as many years as the ensuing legal proceedings, this provocative documentary proposes that the so-called “anti-terrorism” raids were bungled, racist and needlessly terrifying to children. The film’s subtitle ‘Deep in the Forest’ is inspired by ex Red Squad second-in-command Ross Meurant, who argues that as police move into specialist units they grow increasingly paranoid.

'Ship girls' are the subject of this episode of the NZBC’s Probation Service drama. Hapless Janice (Freda Costley), a 19-year-old with a father who moved to Whakatāne and a mother she doesn’t see if she can help it, is looking for love in the wrong places: sneaking onto the wharves to party with sailors in the hope she’ll find a boyfriend. Now the police have arrested her and, if she’s not careful, she’ll end up in borstal. Will the Probation Officers (Ewen Solon and Glynis McNicholl) be able to "stop her gangway habit becoming an addiction"?

This NFU portrait of 19th Century artist Gottfried Lindauer traces his wide-ranging life, from his Bohemian origins and arrival in New Zealand in 1873, aged 35, to his death in Woodville in 1926. Lindauer’s portraits, especially of Māori in formal dress, became an iconic record of colonial era New Zealand people. A market developed for Lindauer’s work, established by his patron Henry Partridge. Lindauer’s commissions (held at Auckland Art Gallery) are respectfully filmed here; and his process is detailed, including his most famous image, Ana Rupene and Child.

When German director Peter Falkenberg moved to Christchurch in the 1970s, he faced disdain from conservative locals after setting up avant-garde theatre company Free Theatre. The group was still going strong almost four decades later. Director Shirley Horrocks spent six years capturing their colourful and controversial history, and filming them in action. Interviewees in the 76 minute documentary include director Stuart McKenzie, who reflects on how out there the group was in the early 1980s, and founding member Nick Frost, who recalls when people tried to shut them down.