Acting
The lives and loves of the residents of Ferndale.
Heidi the Hippo, star of 'The Feebles Variety Hour', discovers her lover Bletch the Walrus is cheating on her. And with all the world waiting for the big show, the assorted co-stars must contend with drug addiction, extortion, robbery, disease, Vietnam flashbacks, drug dealing, and murder.
In 1943, U.S. marines are stationed near Wellington. One of them is murdered by the boss of the Hotel Workers Union, who is sitting pretty, exempt from military service and living it up on black market profits. Girls under the control of the union - of whom the victim's fiancee, Rose, is one - give sexual favours to the Americans, in return for information. The marine assigned to investigate the murder, tries to find Rose through a public health nurse who traces VD infections. However they discover there it more going on than they realized, involving a conspiracy amongst the Union, the government and the U.S. military.
Recluse Smith is drawn into a revolutionary struggle between guerrillas and right-wingers in New Zealand. Implicated in a murder and framed as a revolutionary conspirator, Smith tries to maintain an attitude of non-violence while caught between warring factions.
Director Roger Donaldson's 1977 movie of CK Stead novel Smith's Dream helped spark a new wave of Kiwi cinema. Getting there was a cash-strapped, bare-knuckle ride. In this documentary cast and crew recall a communal film set that was "constantly on the go" as they pulled together drama, car chases, and gun battles using mainly ingenuity.
A hundred years after the theft from New Zealand of three irreplaceable tribal carvings, two members of a Māori tribe decide it's time for ancient grievances to be put right. Variously praised as a major step forward in indigenous cinema, attacked for overambition, and little screened, Te Rua marked Barry Barclay’s impassioned follow-up to his acclaimed debut feature Ngāti.
During World War 2, a farmer in New Zealand murders seven people. The police, along with local Maori trackers, hunt him in the bush country.
Colin is the deputy principal of a city high school (Avondale College, Auckland) who reluctantly applies for the principal's job on the latter's retirement. Colin's wife, Elizabeth - who is losing interest in him -gives a dinner party. Among the guests is Judy, temporarily reconciled with her husband for the sake of the children. Colin - who has taken upon jogging to combat a spreading waistline - and Judy, gradually enter into an affair.
Kelsey Donovan searches for her father, Jake, whom she hasn't seen in over twenty years. When he finds her in a picturesque small town in New Zealand, they can't get close. Kelsey's father works as a professional treasure hunter in New Zealand and also organizes diving courses for tourists with Dillon Ward. Kelsey doesn't like her father treating the handsome Dillon like he's his son. When Jake is nearly killed in a diving accident, father and daughter finally seem to bond. When Kelsey and Dillon begin to grow fond of each other, Jake isn't thrilled.
Based upon the life of activist and trade unionist (and later MP) Sonja Davies. The film covers her life up to 1956, when, at age 33, she was elected to the Nelson Hospital Board. During this period she develops strong socialist beliefs, marries and divorces, at age 17 trains as a nurse, has a romance (and a child) with an American marine who is killed in WWII action. She battles tuberculosis and marries a former boyfriend when he returns from the war. She becomes part of a women's ill-fated campaign to save the Nelson railway line from closure and begins to be elected to political bodies.
Writer/director Paul Maunder's second drama after his award-winning Going Up North for a While is a portrait of a woman's mental health crisis. In part one Julie (Denise Maunder) is haunted by her birth mother's breakdown. Her inner monologue narrates events; Julie hopes marriage and a job will "cure" her, and falls pregnant. After a traumatic delivery, she suffers an acute episode and is admitted into care. Part two takes place in a psychiatric hospital where drugs, electroconvulsive therapy and art therapy were standard treatments at the time. Maunder undertook research at Auckland's Kingseat psychiatric hospital.
In 1915 four kids try to stop the arsonist who is terrifying their small New Zealand town, but no one believes them. Based on the novel by Maurice Gee.
Richard Turner made Squeeze to break the "conspiracy of silence" about homosexuality. A pioneering early portrait of Auckland's LGBT scene, Squeeze centres on the relationship between a young man (Paul Eady) and the confident executive (Robert Shannon) who romances him, then mentions he has a fiancée. The film was discussed in Parliament after Patricia Bartlett campaigned against the possibility it might get NZ Film Commission funding (it didn't). Kevin Thomas in The LA Times praised Squeeze's integrity and the "steadfast compassion with which it views its hero".
