This booster's gem was produced by the NFU to mark Canterbury's centennial. The original Canterbury crusaders' dream of a model England colony is shown in settler life re-enactments. The importance of meat and wheat to the region's prosperity is extolled and a progressive narrative — "in one brief century they've turned the wilderness into fertile farms and built their red-roofed homes" — underpins contemporary scenes (cricket, church) and much bucolic (plains, alps) scenery. Trivia: Peter Jackson used an excerpt from the film to open Heavenly Creatures.

As a showcase history of Christchurch on screen this collection is backwards looking; but the devastation caused by the earthquakes gives it much more than nostalgic poignancy. As Russell Brown reflects in his introduction, the clips are mementos from, "a place whose face has changed". They testify to the buildings, culture and life of a city now lost, but sure to rise. 

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. 

This 1983 episode of arts series Kaleidoscope profiles the life of Rita Angus, whose paintings have won critical acclaim both in New Zealand and abroad. After growing up in Hastings and Palmerston North, she moved down to Christchurch, initially to study at Canterbury College School of Art. Later she spent more than a decade in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon. Featuring interviews with those who knew her at various stages of her life, and numerous examples of her work, this half-hour documentary provides a thorough overview of who Rita Angus was.

This promotional travelogue, made for the Christchurch City Council, shows off the city and its environs. Filmed at a time when New Zealand’s post-war economy was booming as it continued its role as a farmyard for the “Old Country”, it depicts Christchurch as a prosperous city, confident in its green and pleasant self-image as a “better Britain” (as James Belich coined NZ’s relationship to England), and architecturally dominated by its cathedrals, churches and schools. Many of these buildings were severely damaged or destroyed in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

The youngest of eight children from a prominent Canterbury family, brothers Robin and Gordon Harper signed up eagerly to enlist in World War l. The Harpers fought in Turkey and Egypt as machine gunners with the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, earning medals for their bravery at Hill 60 in Gallipoli. Using their farming skills, the brothers found each other on the battlefield with their distinctive dog whistles. Susan Harper, a relative of the pair, displays a Turkish machine gun one of the brothers brought home. The other sibling was killed in battle in Egypt.

This 1967 NFU instructional film demonstrates breathing exercises developed by Bernice ‘Bunny’ Thompson, to help children suffering from asthma and bronchitis. The film was based on the pioneering physiotherapist's 1963 book of the same name. Director Frank Chilton won renown for his documentaries dealing with the health and welfare needs of children. Asthma and Your Child was commissioned by the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, and was an early example of a privately-funded socially-useful film. The animation of respiratory processes is by Morrow Productions.

TVNZ's long running quiz show pitted four-member teams from the country’s universities against each other for egghead bragging rights. Host Peter Sinclair (C'mon, Happen Inn) poses the "starter for 10" and presides over this second semifinal from the fifth series. Sinclair is typically sharp — "Lake Taupō. A very hesitant answer to what I thought was a very easy question" — as teams from Victoria and Canterbury (eventual series winners) compete for a finals place. Subjects range from The Decalogue to Dire Straits. Calculators and encyclopedia are at stake.

In this episode of the beloved education-focused magazine programme for children the trio of presenters (Ole Maiava, Amber Cunliffe, and future Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan) get touchy with tuna (māori for eel) and other sea creatures. Cunliffe visits an eel fishery at Lake Ellesmere; then Maiava and Keoghan get close to kina, crabs and anemone at Otago University’s Marine Studies Centre. In the second segment Keoghan gets kitted up and meets with some Canterbury ice hockey enthusiasts; he manages, mostly, to stay on his feet, and tries out goal tending.

Sensuous expressions of landscape and the human form made Edward Bullmore (aka Ted Bullmore) a pioneer of surrealism in New Zealand art. This Kaleidoscope report interviews the painter’s colleagues and family, and surveys the artist’s life and career: from an unlikely mix of Balclutha farm boy, Canterbury rep rugby player and Ilam art student, to success in 60s London – exhibiting with René Magritte and Salvador Dali, and having his works used by Stanley Kubrick in film A Clockwork Orange – before returning to teach in Rotorua (and obscurity), and his untimely death in 1978.