Oxley Hughan

This impressionistic, late 1960s survey traces Auckland from volcanic origins to a population of half a million people. Produced by the National Film Unit, it finds a city of "design and disorder" growing steadily but secure in its own skin as its populace basks in the summer sun. A wry, at times bemused, Hugh Macdonald script and an often frenetic, jazzy soundtrack accompany time honoured Queen City images: beaches and yachting, parks and bustling city streets, and an unpredictable climate given to humidity and sudden downpours. Awards: 1970 Edinburgh Film Festival - Certificate of Merit 1968 Pacific Asia Travel Association Conference (Taiwan) - Third Prize 1967 Venice Film Festival - Lion of St Mark Plaque 1967 Tourfilm Festival (Czechoslovakia) - Tourism Film Prize

This 1967 documentary tells the story of 734 Polish children who were adopted by New Zealand in 1944 as WWII refugees. Moving interviews, filmed 20 years later, document their harrowing exodus from Poland: via Siberian labour camps, malnutrition and death, to being greeted by PM Peter Fraser on arrival in NZ. From traumatic beginnings the film chronicles new lives (as builders, doctors, educators, and mothers) and ends with a family beach picnic. Made for television, this was one of the last productions directed by pioneering woman filmmaker Kathleen O'Brien.

The film 'Canterbury is One Hundred' was produced by the National Film Unit in 1950 to celebrate the region's centennial. Written and directed by Oxley Hughan, it emphasises the bucolic agricultural productivity of the Canterbury region, particularly through the lambing and wheat-growing industries. Life in Canterbury's cities is presented as people 'taking pleasure in their neat gardens and comfortable wooden houses', in contrast to the rustic huts built by the early settlers a century earlier. The film is also a poignant tribute to Christchurch's celebrated Neo-Gothic architecture, much of which was destroyed following the February 2011 earthquake.