This Geoff Steven doco follows NZ chefs Stephen Randle and Neville Ballantyne to a bitterly cold northern Japanese winter to compete in an international snow carving contest. Their entry, a sheep dipping scene created out of a 26 tonne block of snow, manages to look even more surreal in the icy Sapporo cityscape than the British team’s London double decker bus. Spirited competition in sub-zero temperatures produces an America’s Cup style rules controversy, but there’s light relief from the hard partying alternative American team from Portland, Oregon.

NZ On Screen's Car Collection is loaded with vehicles of every make and vintage, as a line-up of legendary Kiwis get behind the wheel — some acting the part. The talent includes Bruce McLaren, Scott Dixon, Bruno Lawrence, a clever canine, and a great many bent fenders. Onetime car show host Danny Mulheron tells tales, and picks out some personal favourites here. 

From the icons (Sky Tower, Otara Market, Rangitoto, The Bridge), celebs, clans and stereotypes (Jafas), to the streets (Queen St, K Road), and Super City suburbs (Ferndale, Mt Raskill, Morningside), this collection celebrates Auckland onscreen. Reel through the moods and the multicultural, metro, muggy charms of New Zealand’s largest city. In this backgrounder, No. 2 director Toa Fraser writes about Auckland as a place of myth, diversity and broken jaws.

This documentary is a hallucinogenic exploration of the allure of the foot and the cult of the shoe. What other item of clothing carries the promise of such pleasure or pain? A podiatrist, a ballerina, a cross dresser, a mistress, an academic, a transexual, a femme fatale and a couple of shoe salesmen journey into the depths of their soles. Selected for Venice Film Festival in 1996, Footage was an award-winning excursion into documentary making for feature director Niki Caro.

It's Friday 4th December, 2015 and panel series 7 Days is celebrating its 200th episode with a live audience at the Auckland Town Hall. Everyone is up for a party, and nothing says 'party' more than guest Tim Shadbolt jumping out of a giant cardboard cake. The recipe is the same, but longer: two teams of comedians lead by regulars Paul Ego and Dai Henwood compete for wildly erratic points, but for this episode 7 Days becomes 7 Years, as the panel riff off news stories dating from 2009 when their first episode aired, through to 2015. Jon Toogood and choir Viva Voce guest star.

In this episode of her TV3 series for pre-schoolers, Suzy Cato uses songs, stories, animations and puppets to focus on a topic that will soon loom large for her audience — going to school. Suzy explores the mysteries of the schoolbag with its lunchbox and pencil case; and she tells a story about her own first day at school. A blackboard is used to name parts of the human body in English and Māori; and there are field inserts that take a bilingual look at different colours, and join a family preparing a picnic which they then take to the beach.   

In this episode of the real estate reality series, super salesman Michael Boulgaris has talked a restaurateur into selling his penthouse apartment — but the price has to be right and Boulgaris needs to find active buyers for the auction. Meanwhile, an Auckland woman is on a challenging quest to find an apartment big enough to house her super-sized 6'8" New York fiancée; and there are sellers, not buyers, getting cold feet in another Boulgaris transaction (while he waits on the national listings see if he’s still number one, and refurbishes his office).

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.

Harold Beven reckons he’s the luckiest man to serve in the Second World War. Born in a village east of London, he saw plenty of action in the (UK) Royal Navy, but by his own admission, never got his feet wet. Joining up as soon as possible after the outbreak of war, Beven served in almost all the naval theatres. As a Chief Petty Officer, he was involved in the evacuations of Greece and Crete — and later the allied invasions of Sicily and Italy — as well as the D-Day invasion of France. At the age of 96, Beven remembers entire conversations as if it was yesterday.

Jonathan Brough’s documentary on the making of Whale Rider travels from the East Coast town of Whangara, where the mythical whale rider Paikea landed, to Hollywood. This excerpt concentrates on the movie’s vital special effects component: nine whales, brought to the screen through a combination of life-sized models and digital effects. The models were made by Auckland company Glasshammer; the largest measured 65 feet in length. The human element was also important, with actor Keisha Castle-Hughes describing the challenges of filming the whale-riding scenes.