In this series about butchery, Ken Hieatt dons his apron and saw to teach meat cutting skills in the home. Standing in front of two beef carcasses, Hieatt explains the tools of the trade and how to keep knives sharp. After sharpening his knife on a stone, Hieatt displays his skills by trimming his arm hairs. Hieatt assures the viewer that if you cut a beef carcass with his special technique, "you'll end up not 100% butcher but not too bad." State television produced several short programmes like this, from five to 15 minutes long, as show "fillers".

Ken Hieatt was a butcher on Auckland's North Shore when television came a knocking. The state broadcaster was looking to create fillers (short programmes to fill gaps in TV schedules), and a friend of a friend knew Hieatt. The butcher started his TV career on series Butcher's Hook, which then morphed into Home Butchery. The renamed series taught viewers how to cut up (or break down) a beef carcass. Series director Bryan Williams recalls that a key point of filler shows like these was to increase Kiwi content on screen. 

This edition of the long-running National Film Unit series documents the curriculum at Manutahi Native District School in Ruatōria in 1947. The roll of 300 primarily Māori students, travel to the rural school on bus, foot and horse to learn everything from the alphabet to preparing preserves. Set in the post-war baby boom period, the male students learn to build a cottage while the girls learn ‘home economics’ (cooking and running a household). The first principle of the schooling is “learning by doing” and for the rural kids “the whole land is a classroom.”

This feature documentary goes beyond the supermarket deep freeze, to look at the stories behind the meat that ends up on our plates. The film is built around three farmers and a hunter: industrial pig farmer Ian, who argues profit is not his main motivation, straight-talking 'one-woman farming operation' Jill, chicken farmer Tony (who discusses killing 1000 chickens a week), and deer hunter Josh, who thinks that many lack awareness of how food gets to their plate. Directed by David White (short film I Kill), Meat can be watched in full via The NZ Herald website (see link below). 

Based partly on two tragedies that occurred in Europe, this darkly comic tale centres on a butcher who works near Parliament. The butcher leaves his young son to handle the customers so that he can go upstairs and engage in some hanky panky with his wife. But with rent payments due, underlying tensions soon erupt into bloody nightmare. Director Stuart McKenzie and his real-life partner, actor Miranda Harcourt, would later collaborate again on the feature film For Good. 

In this award-winning short film Michael is a 17-year-old who gets the abattoir blues during his first day at 'the works'. Fitting in turns out to be the least of Michael’s worries as young blood is welcomed on the line in the old fashioned way, and rite of passage is interpreted literally to meaty effect. Meathead was filmed at the Wallace Meat plant in Waitoa. Based on the true story of a mate of his, director Sam Holst’s debut short was selected for Cannes and won the Crystal Bear in the Generation (14plus) section of the 2012 Berlin Film Festival.

A young taxidermist lures her unsuspecting prey deep into a copse before flaying him alive - yes it's another stunning, if not a little macabre offering from the Fish'N'Clips stable. In this gorgeously shot clip, James Solomon presents a grisly affair, complete with bird butchery, knitwear and glass eyes, while the band acquit themselves extremely well with formidable performances all round.  

The first leg of Peter Hayden’s journey across latitude 45 south takes him across the Waitaki Plains and up to Danseys Pass. He visits the site of a moa butchery and the sunken circular umuti (cabbage tree ovens) of early Māori. Guided by colonial literature, he visits New Zealand’s tallest tree (a eucalypt, which he finds horizontal). Drought busting desperation of 1889 and the provenance of Corriedale sheep is also covered. In a riparian side trip, Hayden heads up the Maerewhenua River where gold miners succeeded only in ravaging the landscape.