Movies: John O'Shea

The life story of Colin McKenzie, a forgotten pioneer of international cinema who was born in rural New Zealand in 1888....

A call girl goes to a priest to confess a sin she hasn't committed yet: she plans to kill herself on her next birthday. Then she disappears and he goes looking for her, enlisting the help of an ad hoc congregation of troubled souls along the way. A s...

Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspirat...

A teenage boy, Nick, has difficulty coping with the death of a friend. When Nick's grandmother also dies, his grandfather, thinking that the boy will not be able to handle another loss, conceals her death and takes Nick on a journey into the countrys...

Director Geoff Steven's personal perspective on the Kiwi cinema renaissance of the 1970s. It traces the development of the local film industry from the ‘she'll be right' days when filming permits were unknown, and all that was needed to get a picture...

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Walter Burton's realistic photographs depicting poor treatment of Maori prisoners are rejected by late 19th century government officials. Walter is condemned to making a living from everyday studio work, the frustration of which is apparently quite s...

Documentary about sailing legend Geoff Stagg and his yacht Whispers....

Conversations with four people — an artist, a woman struggling with her identity as a high achiever, an actor, and a priest — exploring their inner worlds, their self-image and how they feel they fit into society....

Cannes is the town in France where Bergman meets bikinis, and the art of filmmaking meets the art of the deal. In 1975, a group of expat Kiwis managed to score interviews with some of the festival's emerging talents, indulging their own cinematic dre...

“The big ALL FUN show for the whole family to enjoy!” was the tagline for this musical comedy classic. Sir Howard Morrison (as himself) and Rotorua are the stars in the tiki-flavoured tale. Moving from Sydney to a Rotorua music festival the plot cent...

A hundred years after the theft from New Zealand of three irreplaceable tribal carvings, two Maori, Rewi and Peter, decide it's time for ancient grievances to be put right. Both men are in Berlin where the carvings are stored in a museum. Plans go aw...

A nightmare chase across the scenic splendor of a wild continent. David Manning, a young accountant, is unable to live within his income. He spends his spare time in Auckland with the young set - and his friends Sandra, Dorothy and Athol all like th...

Indigenous farmers in Peru, Nicaragua, Italy, France, Australia and New Zealand share their intimacy with the land and the seeds they have nurtured for generations; global corporations attempt to 'own' the intellectual property of seeds....

In a Maori settlement, Ngati Toa leader Te Rauparaha composes the famous chant "Ka Mate", also known as the haka, after evading enemy capture by hiding in a kumara pit....

Actor Martyn Sanderson returns in 1977 to the Hokianga of his youth and visits his elderly and romantic aunt, Olive Bracey. Her reminiscences of pioneer life mesh with nostalgic songs and readings from her fiction....

This promotion for the Edmonds Baking Powder Company features beloved radio personality Aunt Daisy (Maud Ruby Basham). Its narrative is entrenched with the gender stereotypes of 1950s suburbia....

Set in and around the fictional town of Kapua in 1948, Ngati is the story of a Māori community. The film comprises three narrative threads: a boy, Ropata, is dying of leukaemia; the return of a young Australian doctor, Greg, and his discovery that he...

John Middleton Murry visits France to finalize the publication of a collection of his late wife, Katherine Mansfield's, letters and journals. The publisher's girlfriend Marie (who physically resembles Mansfield) and Murry become friends. Marie grad...

Tom Sullivan, a young Pakeha journalist researching a series of exploitative, tabloid articles on "the" Maori people becomes a casual labourer on a Mahia Peninsular farm. The emotional liaison he forms with Rawi, a young Maori woman exposes the racis...