Made by feature film pioneer Roger Mirams (Broken Barrier), this 1951 film promotes New Zealand outdoor recreation. Coming decades before bungy jumps and hobbits, this was an early effort to brand NZ as an adventure sport playground, taking in snow sports, deer-stalking, pig hunting, fishing and yachting. Regular filmgoers may have found Miram's footage familiar; most of it came from items he'd shot for Sydney-based company Movietone News. Some shots dated from as early as 1948, when he left the NFU to found company the Pacific Film Unit. 

For their fourth web series, creative collective The Candle Wasters shifted from using the plays of Shakespeare as inspiration, to an original story. Set in a children's indoor adventure playground, Happy Playland is a "queer rom-com musical" where employees cope with crushes, anxiety and life as digital natives. Neenah Dekkers-Reihana and Dani Yourukova (who both acted in Candle Wasters web series Bright Summer Night) play young lovers Billie and Zara. Billie is an agitated actress, while Cris is a social justice warrior. When the playground faces closure, the pair face upheaval. 

This short film follows the efforts of schoolgirl Nina to recover her red clogs, a cherished birthday gift from her Yugoslavian nana. Nina lost the shoes playing hopscotch at school; she follows muddy footprints to find the thieves, where a playground insult prompts her to question her identity. The story was inspired by first time filmmaker Annalise Patterson's own upbringing, where her family didn't acknowledge either its Māori or 'Dally' heritage. 'Dallies' largely came to New Zealand from the Dalmatian coast of Croatia (formerly a part of Yugoslavia).

This 1982 film, made for the New Zealand Council for Recreation and Sport, is an impressionistic exploration of play. Child narrators talk about what play means to them, while the images capture young people engaged in recreation. The focus is on informal play: kids and teenagers at playgrounds, hunting for frogs, reading, skylarking in the snow, doing cartwheels on the beach, fixing motorbikes, skipping, stargazing and playing Space Attack. Seagulls inspire dreams of flight for a young girl, and a fancy dress ball for adults shows the enduring spirit of play. 

This is the bloopers reel from the 2013 TV2 series for young people. Presenters Alex Tarrant and Niwa Whatuira feature prominently. Whatuira states the obvious when meeting some Diwali drummers, singers Anika Moa and Ria Hall need some practice as a presenting duo, Tarrant drops the mic (but not in a good way), actor Shavaughn Ruakere has trouble with Shortland Street’s sliding doors, Stan Walker provides a dodgy intro to his music video, Fat Freddy members Dallas and Ian fluff their lines, and Whatuira chats up an interviewee. Plus there are festival and playground photo bombs.

No Opportunity Wasted was a reality show devised by Phil Keoghan, Emmy Award-winning Kiwi host of The Amazing Race. In the show Keoghan ambushed contestants and gave them a limited time (three days) and limited resources (usually $3000) to ditch the excuses and "live life now". Challenges included swimming with sharks, building a giant community playground, and a NZ tough guy competition (that included future Olympic champion rower Eric Murray). The New Zealand edition followed on from the inaugural series that screened on Discovery Channel in the US in 2004.

In 1968 John Rowles scored a top three hit in the UK. Late that year he returned to New Zealand to a rapturous welcome. A fly-on-the-wall documentary was made about his homecoming tour, from which this clip of Rowles performing ‘M’Lady’ is taken. On the tour he launched 'M’Lady' as his next NZ single; he tells an Auckland DJ that it's his best "uptempo" song yet, and the tune scores scenes of Rowles galavanting around a playground with a cigar, pretending to drive a tractor, and licking an ice cream on the beach. 'M’Lady' went on to top the Kiwi charts.

The Candle Wasters won a global audience with three Shakespeare-inspired web series featuring modern-day Wellington youth. Then they created this original queer rom-com musical about the workers at a children's playground. The creative team (Sally and Elsie Bollinger, Minnie Grace, Claris Jacobs) continued the collaboration with Robbie Nicol that had begun on previous web series Bright Summer Night. Funded by NZ On Air’s Skip Ahead initiative, 10 episodes were shot in mid 2017, and then uploaded to YouTube. The team won SPADA’s New Filmmakers Award later that year.

The Mighty Civic offered a delirious and colourful celebration of Auckland's grandest old movie palace, made at a time when the building's future was under threat. The film uses a mixture of stylised sequences, archive footage, personal memories and poetic narration to evoke the spirit of the theatre in its heyday. Director Peter Wells' film galvanised public support, and ultimately the building was saved and refurbished, to remain the crown jewel of Queen Street's cinema district. This clip features the first 10 minutes of the hour long film. Costa Botes writes about the film here.