This collection brings together over 60 titles covering Kiwis at war. Iconic documentaries and films tell stories of terrible cost, heroism and kinship. There are also background pieces by historians Chris Pugsley and Jock Phillips, and broadcaster Ian Johnstone. Pugsley muses, "It is sobering to think that in the first half of the 20th Century the big OE for most New Zealanders was going to war."

This song is taken from the only new album released in the 1990s by Kiwi music legends Hello Sailor. In an AudioCulture profile of the band, writer Murray Cammick praised the Dave McArtney-penned track as one of two strong additions to the Hello Sailor canon (alongside song 'New Tattoo', also from 1994). The music video features the band playing (on a Ponsonby street, in a derelict building) intercut with archive clips (famous sporting moments, returned servicemen, Edmund Hillary, hikoi, the Beatles tour), echoing the song’s lyrical themes of waning memories and nostalgia.

This consolidating episode of the archive-based New Zealand history series finds World War II at an end, the return of Kiwi servicemen and the country in an optimistic mood. That's sealed by the 1950 British Empire Games where New Zealand is third on the medal table. But rising prices and low incomes lead to more militant unionism, culminating in the fractious waterfront workers dispute of 1951. At the same time there's a new flowering of the arts. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is established and a new generation of writers and artists take centre stage.

This documentary explores resurgent interest in Anzac Day and examines the Kiwi desire to “remember them” (those who served in war) — ranging from patriotism to protest to burgeoning dawn services. The doco is framed around the return of the Unknown Warrior to a Wellington tomb in 2004; and a trip to Trieste, Italy, for Gordon and Luciana Johnston and their 24-year-old granddaughter Kushla. Gordon was a World War II gunner and Luciana an Italian nurse. Kushla learns of their war experience, and the early Cold War stand-off in Trieste following Nazi surrender.

This post-war film was made to showcase New Zealand to UK audiences. Directed by Michael Forlong, the NFU film is a booster’s catalogue of contemporary NZ life. The message is that NZ is a modern pastoral paradise: open for business but welfare aware. Nature is conquered via egalitarian effort; air and sea links overcome the tyranny of distance; and science informs primary industry. Māori are depicted assimilating into the Pākehā world. Sport, suburbia and scenic wonder are touted, and an NZSO performance shows that the soil can grow culture as well as clover. 

Director Karl Zohrab’s docudrama makes the case for World War I military leader Major General Sir Andrew Russell to be resurrected in Kiwi popular memory alongside the likes of Freyberg. Based on Jock Vennell's biography, the film spans Russell’s life from his Hawke’s Bay childhood to Gallipoli and the Western Front — where the New Zealand Division commander was acknowledged for his tactical nous — to the latent effect of his war experience. It screened on The History Channel for Anzac Day 2014. Colin Moy (In My Father’s Den) plays Russell in battlefield dramatisations.

Memories of Service captures the war experiences of Kiwi veterans who served in campaigns from World War II to Korea, Vietnam and beyond. Director David Blyth (Our Oldest Soldier) and Silverdale RSA museum curator Patricia Stroud wanted to make the series of interviews as an “archival/educational treasure for all New Zealanders.” In this selection of stories compiled from the first nine interviews, the returned servicemen recall training, survival, imprisonment, parachuting from crashing planes, lighter moments, and bonds of brotherhood.

This is a silent film record of the civic reception of returning World War I hero, Lieutenant John Grant. The Hawera builder won a Victoria Cross aged 28 for raiding several German machine-gun 'nests' — by leaping into them — near Bapaume, France on 1 September 1918. Grant's citation noted he "displayed coolness, determination and valour". Grant is wearing the NZ Army's 'lemon squeezer' hat as he plants a tree and poses for portraits in front of the crowds, and receives the supreme award for battlefield bravery given to Commonwealth servicemen.

Māori Battalion - March To Victory tells the story of the New Zealand Army's (28th) Māori Battalion, which fought in campaigns during World War ll. Director and writer Tainui Stephens sets out in the feature-length documentary to tell the stories of five men who served with the unit, and also "capture how they felt about it". Narration by actor George Henare, remembrances, visits to historic sites, archival footage, and graphic stills create a respectful and stirring screen testament to the men who fought in the Battalion. Stephens writes about the film in the backgrounder.