This 1999 documentary see presenter Gary McCormick exploring the lives of New Zealand expats living in London. London Kiwis – including MTV Europe head Brent Hansen, Angel at My Table actor Kerry Fox, chef Peter Gordon, house-boaters Karyn Hay and Andrew Fagan, and drunk backpackers at The Church – reflect on their overseas experience and the meaning of home. Produced alongside a companion documentary on Kiwis in Ireland, London Connection was a further collaboration between McCormick, director Bruce Morrison and producer William Grieve (Heartland). 

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".

When Frank Sanft’s older brother was killed early in World War ll, it only intensified Frank’s determination to serve. Joining the Royal Navy, he was eventually assigned to Operation PLUTO, which involved laying an undersea fuel pipeline between the UK and Cherbourg (vital in keeping Allied vehicles moving, directly after the invasion of France). Frank laughs now at a close call with a sniper ashore in France. Serving in the Pacific, he was there after Singapore’s notorious Changi PoW camp was liberated.  In 2017 Sanft was awarded a prestigious French Legion of Honour. 

The meteoric career of one of NZ’s greatest entertainers is examined in this documentary. John Rowles went from a Kawerau childhood to stardom in London at 21; but, after headlining in Hawaii and Las Vegas, he saw it all slip away. Those roofing ads and near bankruptcy followed, but Rowles has retained his self belief and that voice. A stellar cast of interviewees analyse his strengths and weaknesses, including Sir Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, Neil Finn and late promoter Phil Warren. Amongst the star cameos, John’s sister Cheryl Moana explains the downside of his best-known local hit.

This documentary looks at the life of neglected painter Edith Collier. Whanganui-bred Collier left for London in her late 20s to study art; her painting flourished, experimenting with modernism alongside fellow expat Frances Hodgkins. She returned home after World War I to family duty, and ridicule for her art (her disgusted father set fire to her nudes). Interviews with her biographer and family, and shots of her work, make for a poignant biography of a (curtailed) artistic life. Listener reviewer Helene Wong called it “affecting viewing, with a sense of discovery”.

"A social satire about an entire Antipodean generation, comfortable with what it knows best." London, 1983. It's time for a party. A group of young New Zealanders have arrived at the other end of the world to drink, play Kiwi music, search for shelter, and talk about other New Zealanders. Scripted by playwright Fiona Bartlett, this ambitious OE story plays out in one single ten minute shot (Three takes were printed). Director Jonathan Brough later directed episodes of Outrageous Fortune, The Pretender and short film No Ordinary Sun.

Arriving downunder from London in 1958, Marti Friedlander began photographing New Zealand, partly as a way of coming to terms with what she saw as its foreignness. In the process she captured aspects of Aotearoa that familiarity had made invisible to its inhabitants. She photographed artists, Springbok Tour protesters, and kuia with moko (for a book with historian Michael King). After screening on TV One, Shirley Horrocks' documentary was one of 20 chosen to screen at Doku.Arts 2007, a German festival devoted to films about artists. Friedlander passed away in November 2016. 

Love, annoyance, jealousy...families can be hotbeds of many kinds of emotion. Documentary Some Kind of Love chronicles the contrasts between two very different siblings: artist, theatre designer and rampant hoarder Yolanda Sonnabend, and her brother Joseph, a pioneering AIDS scientist who moves to London to look after Yolanda, as she battles dementia. Filmmaking team Thomas and Sumner Burstyn continue the exploration of family begun in acclaimed 2009 documentary This Way of Life. The result has won invites to film festivals from Vancouver to Auckland.   

Award-winning web series High Road follows the travails of Terry Huffer (Mark Mitchinson), an ex-rocker washed up in Piha where he DJs from a caravan. This third season opener heads back in time to London, to tell Huffer’s origin story: tracking a big night at a pub and what follows — a confrontation with his Oscar-winning sister, actor Emma Thompson (played by Emma Thompson), and her actor husband Greg Wise (playing Greg Wise). A fed up Thompson drops some choice swear words, compares her brother to Keith Richards, and exports him to New Zealand to sort himself out. 

This film documents the influential 1979 New Zealand tour of a black theatre group from London arts centre Keskidee. They visit marae, perform at The Gluepot, prisons and youth centres; meet gang members, Ratana ministers and a young Tame Iti; and korero about roots and fights for rights. The made-for-TV film was directed by Merata Mita and Martyn Sanderson. On the tour Sanderson met his future wife, Kenyan actor Wanjiku Kairie. Tour instigator Denis O’Reilly argued in 2009 that the doco is “full of insights at a time of huge social and cultural shifts in Aotearoa.”