Social & External
On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours 11 ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to uncover the mystery of how a jet could fly into a mountain in broad daylight. Did the airline have a secret it wanted to bury? This film tells the story of four New Zealand police officers who went to Antarctica as part of the police operation to recover the victims of the crash. Set in the beautiful yet hostile environment of Antarctica, this is the emotional and compelling true story of an extraordinary police operation.
In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.
Women talk about the circumstances that drove them to seek illegal abortions and the often traumatic result. Interwoven with historical photographs and newsreel footage, the stories expose how the reality of women's lives were counterposed to what was socially and morally expected of them.
This Traveltalk series short visit to New Zealand starts in Auckland, a bustling, modern city. Next is Christchurch, home of Canterbury University, where rowing teams participate in a regatta. Nearby is Lake Wakatipu, which inspires artists to put their impressions on canvas. We then visit Rotorua, a city famous for its geysers, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and other geothermal activity. At Ferry Springs there is lots of trout for fishing. Later, a group of natives performs a canoe dance.
The traditional healers in the Swiss and French mountains.
A contemplation of art and adventure in the southern wilds of New Zealand by both a landscape photographer and an adventure filmmaker. This film is the unexpected result of their two unique perspectives.
Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.
A documentary about the history of settler groups that came to New Zealand from Europe.
After her gender identity was denied in her homeland, Lee Li, a transgender asylum seeker, was forced to leave her country, family, and language to embark on a journey toward belonging, freedom, and self-empowerment.
Operation 8 examines the so-called 'anti-terror' raids that took place around New Zealand on October 15, 2007 - asking how and why they took place and at what cost to those targeted.
A bold reveal of a rose tattoo opens this 1980 documentary on tattooing in New Zealand. The potted history includes visits to tattoo parlours on K' Road and Hastings, and the studios of industry legends Steve Johnson and Roger Ingerton. Tattooists discuss public stigma, people's reasons for getting inked, and popular designs: sailors, serpents, swallows and tā moko. Made for documentary slot Contact, Skin Pics chronicles a time when "folk art has become high art".
A documentary about Sir Len Southward OBE and his collection of vehicles at his Southward Car Museum in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, among the largest car museums in the world.
Wolves divide and fascinate us. 150 years after they were driven to extinction in Central Europe, they are returning slowly but inexorably. Are they dangerous to humans? Is it possible to coexist? Using Switzerland as a point of departure, where wolves have returned in the very recent past, this documentary sheds light on the wolf situation in Austria, eastern Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and even Minnesota, where freely roaming packs of wolves are more common sight.
"Jolly Roger" could mean Roger Schawinski. But by definition, a "Jolly Roger" is the classic black pirate flag with skull and crossbones. This documentary tells the unvarnished story of the Swiss radio pirates who emerged in the 1970s. The focus is on Radio 24 in its wild years, when Schawinski's team broadcast from Italy, with the strongest FM station in the world at the time, straight down from Pizzo Groppera, 130 kilometers all the way to the Zurich area. Supported by numerous original documents from private filmmakers and from the SRG archives, the viewer relives the absurd radio war between David and Goliath that lasted almost four years, 24 years after this war between the radio pirates and the state power began on November 13, 1979. The many known and unknown fighters, who rallied behind their Radio Winkelried Schawinski in 1979 to help usher Switzerland into a new media age, remember the good and bad times, the demonstrations and the numerous threatened and actual closures.
Is the solution to Switzerland's future to integrate Germany into the confederation? After all, like Michael Ringier, CEO of the Ringier media group, says, blithely ignoring all minorities, we're very close in culture and language. Oskar Freysinger takes out his guitar and sings his answer. Politicians from French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino think expanding will help the country survive. The former German foreign minister thinks the two countries' traditions are too different. The banker Oswald Grübel is worried about Germany's debts, although he'd be prepared to take over its assets. With serious interviews interspersed with gags (boat people on Lake Constance, the last Habsburger as a peasant), Giaccobbo gathers off-the-cuff reactions which reveal a lot about the different mentalities. The movie laughs at preconceived notions, redefines neutrality and reflects on what designates a nation. Switzerland, which loves to teach the world a lesson, will soon helvetize the planet, oder?
I followed the everyday lives of Ali, Kais, Ertan and Alban with my camera for over two years. The time was characterized by disappointments, conflicts and also great successes. It all began with a visit to the "Klingelpütz" youth center in the middle of Cologne. Young migrants have been meeting here for many years.
The larger-than-life story of Kim Dotcom, the 'most wanted man online', is extraordinary enough, but the battle between Dotcom and the US Government and entertainment industry—being fought in New Zealand—is one that goes to the heart of ownership, privacy and piracy in the digital age.
A three-part documentary about the long road to women's suffrage in Switzerland.
2021 was a turning point for Belarus and 6 Belarusian students - as well as for the city of Łódź, Poland, in which they found themselves. Across the rails of change and transformation, documenting a time that has not been before and will not repeat again. Heroes of the film have very different fates and experiences, but they are all connected by the place they found themselves in - the post-industrial and post-apocalyptic city, which becomes a part of their story and a hero of its own. Students, transport, quaters, youth, revolution, local apocalypse, changes and turns - they all mix in a documentary kaleidoscope 'Across the Rails'.
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.
Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden, who have fled with their families from extreme trauma, have become afflicted with 'uppgivenhetssyndrom,' or Resignation Syndrome. Facing deportation, they withdraw from the world into a coma-like state, as if frozen, for months, or even years.
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Filmmaker Ai Weiwei examines the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Over the course of one year in 23 countries, Weiwei follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe, including Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany and Iraq.
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
Documentary about the journey of Patrick Allgair and Gwendolin Weisser, who travelled over 100,000 kilometres on foot and by hitchhiking. Starting in Freiburg, Germany, they travelled eastwards for three and a half years, passing through Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan and Mexico on their way around the world.
Photographer Estevan Oriol and artist Mister Cartoon turned their Chicano roots into gritty art, impacting street culture, hip hop and beyond.
This documentary focuses on the actors and their journey over two summers to create the remake to the original IT, by Stephen King. The documentary originally released as bonus material, bundled with IT: Chapter Two.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
If you ever find yourself traveling down Interstate 49 through Missouri, try not to blink—you may miss Rich Hill, population 1,396. Rich Hill is easy to overlook, but its inhabitants are as woven into the fabric of America as those living in any small town in the country. This movie intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in said Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
Acclaimed for his unfiltered reporting and deadpan humor, Andrew Callaghan brings his gonzo style reporting to the undercurrents that led to the January 6 Capitol Riot. As one of the best-known and hardest working journalists of his generation, the 25-year-old ventures on a wild RV journey through America to take the pulse of a divided nation.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
In one single, epic camera move we journey from Earth's surface to the outermost reaches of the universe on a grand tour of the cosmos, to explore newborn stars, distant planets, black holes and beyond.
This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Oprah Winfrey talks with the exonerated men once known as the Central Park Five, plus the cast and producers who tell their story in "When They See Us."
Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica with Captain Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition and filmed the stunning images that make up this extraordinary documentary. (Originally released in 1912 as With Captain Scott in the Antarctic, the material was re-edited and re-issued by Ponting in 1924 as The Great White Silence.)
