Arm yourself with jaffas and get set for debate: NZ On Screen has gone out on a limb and selected an all-time NZ feature film Top 10. Starring the icons of the Kiwi big screen — Blondini, Ada, Beth, Boy. Whet your appetite for our finest features via choice 10-minute excerpts of the movies. Cook the man some eggs, we're taking this Top 10 to Invercargill!

This slot in TV3’s Great War Stories series looks at Kiwi conscientious objector Mark Briggs. In World War I imprisonment faced those who objected to doing their bit for King and country on moral grounds. In 1917 unionist Briggs and 13 others (including Archibald Baxter) were shipped to the front and made an example of via ‘Field Punishment No.1’, which saw the pacifists bound to a post in the open, then forced into the trenches. Archive material and art by Wellington's Bob Kerr depict the torture in this short documentary, which screened during 3 News in 2014.

Independent television network TV3 launched its prime time news bulletin on 27 November 1989, a day after the channel first went to air. Veteran broadcaster Philip Sherry anchors a reporting team that includes future politician Tukoroirangi Morgan (probing kiwi poaching), Ian Wishart (investigating traffic cop-dodging speedsters) and future newsroom boss Mark Jennings (torture in Timaru). Belinda Todd handles the weather, and Janet McIntyre reports on TV3's launch. The Kiwi cricket team faces defeat in Perth (although history will record a famous escape there). 

He Toki Huna sets out to provide an independent overview of New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan (the longest overseas war in which NZ has played a role). The documentary follows journalist Jon Stephenson conducting eyewitness interviews in Afghanistan, and poses provoking questions about Kiwi troops' involvement in a conflict that co-director Kay Ellmers calls an “ill-defined war against an unclear” enemy. Ellmers and Annie Goldson made the Moa Award-winning film for Māori Television, alongside an extended cut which played at NZ’s 2013 Film Festival.

Auckland troubadour Greg Johnson won the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll songwriting award for 1997 with this moody, tortured love song from his fourth album (and first for a major label), Chinese Whispers. The elegant, uncluttered video was directed and edited by Jonathan King. The video was shot in the Auckland suburbs of Newmarket and Parnell. With a narrative straight out of Hitchcock, Johnson is cast as narrator — and both the victim and accomplice of a blonde femme fatale in what appears to be a murder ... with a mysterious handbag the only clue.

In the final episode of the season, larrikin presenters Bill and Ben pretend to offend rugby league stars Monty Betham and Awen Guttenbeil (with a nod to American Beauty). The show's closing references the controversial finale of The Sopranos (complete with mocking soundtrack), and there are cameos from Karl Urban and Temuera Morrison. Ben revels in extended torture of Bill, while Auckland Blues coach Pat Lam concentrates on golfing. Elsewhere a shop dummy does some begging, and a unique interpretation of cross-training enrages a passing screen producer.

Shot in the same year he became producer of Radio With Pictures, Brent Hansen created this gem before going on to become Editor-in-Chief and President of Creative for MTV International. Like a cross between a Kraftwerk gig and an early episode of Dr Who, Pulsing features what must have been particularly exciting special effects, but sadly arrives curiously free of content warnings. The sight of ex-Play School host Tim Bartlett being aurally tortured has lined psychiatrists' pockets for decades.

Working away in a paint-encrusted studio with Hendrix cranked up to 10, often going days without sleep, Philip Clairmont was the archetypal tortured expressionist. This 1981 TVNZ profile explores his chaotic bohemian abode in Mount Eden, a house populated by the found objects and abandoned furniture that would inspire his dense, hallucinatory images. At one point the camera fixes on a single lino print that reads "art is my life". One would eventually consume the other — three years after this was filmed, Clairmont committed suicide at the age of 34.

Named after the German word for a type of gas chamber used in Nazi concentration camps, 'Gaskrankinstation' was the first single off Headless Chickens' second album Body Blow. Actor Peter Tait (Bogans, Kitchen Sink) stars as gas station attendant Ivan, whose desperate monologue drives the track, while the band play some comically tortured-looking instruments in the parking lot. Anita McNaught also makes a cameo appearance as the "lady newsreader" of Ivan's affections.

This Elemeno P video sees the band performing inside a storage freezer in an ice cream factory. "There was no legitimate reason for shooting in a freezer," recalls director Greg Page ('Exit to the City', 'Super Gyration'). "I just enjoy torturing the bands I work with." The location was secured through Flying Fish Executive Producer James Moore, whose family owned an icecream factory in Otara. Page recalls the challenges of filming in below freezing temperatures here.