Heartland - Reefton
Gary McCormick visits the West Coast mining town of Reefton in this full length episode. He takes an early morning trip down Surprise Mine, and gains insights into the tough life of a coal miner. Meanwhile, miners' wives talk about being married to someone with a high risk occupation. McCormick also attends the First Light Festival, held to mark Reefton being the first town in the southern hemisphere with electric lighting. Later he heads to the abandoned gold mining town of Waiuta, and back in Reefton meets a woman with a doll collection which takes up her whole house.
This Town - First Episode
This acclaimed TV series heads to Aotearoa’s heartland, dispensing with narration or a city slicker presenter so that local personalities can represent themselves. The opening episode travels to the West Coast to meet the 'Coasters' who live there: from publicans, prospectors and bushmen, to sheila truck drivers, knitting drag queens and musical theatre directors. The Dominion Post’s Karl du Fresne wrote of the show: "Producer Melanie Rakena has done a superb job seeking out engaging characters with interesting stories and allowing them to tell them in their own way."
Barefoot Cinema
Barefoot Cinema looks at the "art and life" of Alun Bollinger, whom Peter Jackson calls "the finest lighting cameraman that the country has ever produced." Goodbye Pork Pie, Vigil, Heavenly Creatures ... the path of the man known as 'AlBol' is like a screen industry growth chart. But the film is as much an affectionate account of the values and family of a "greenie good keen man", shaped around his four decades-long relationship with wife Helen. In this excerpt, 'AlBol' nails down iron in the rain at his West Coast home, and he and Peter Jackson reflect on their collaborations.
Swami Hansa
Swami Hansa (sometimes credited as Anand Hansa or Malcolm Nish) was operating a camera in 1962, the day TV began broadcasting in Dunedin. Hansa has been shooting ever since, his work ranging across natural history, human interest and the arts. His CV includes many episodes of the long-running Heartland, plus such noted docos as Birth, Kiwi - A Natural History and Horizon doco The Man Who Moved Mountains, made for the BBC.
Bill Toepfer
Although he may not be keen to do so, Bill Toepfer can claim a place in global television history as the man behind the Popstars reality TV juggernaut. Toepfer has enjoyed a long and accomplished career in New Zealand television, editing and producing hundreds of hours of documentaries and TV specials.
Bruce Morrison
Bruce Morrison's extensive career as director, producer and sometime scriptwriter has crossed the gamut: from innovative arts programming and pioneer music videos, to the long-running Heartland series — plus feature films variously involving fast cars, riotous teens and a glamour-struck Donogh Rees.
William Grieve
William Grieve is a producer with more than two decades experience in documentaries, factual series, commercials and feature films. Grieve has worked extensively with filmmaker Bruce Morrison and entertainer Gary McCormick.
Sean Duffy
Best known to the public for an extended career as an actor — he co-starred in Mortimer's Patch and won an award playing a dopey farmer in comedy Willy Nilly — Sean Duffy alternated acting gigs with two decades editing for television. Later he moved into directing, working on a range of shows from Heartland to one-off documentaries.