In a sweeping tale that spans 1000 years and multiple generations – from the distant past to the 19th century, the present day and a strange, dystopian future – this landmark collection traces the collective histories of Indigenous peoples across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Diverse in perspective, content and form, traversing the terrain of grief, love and dispossession, they each bear witness to these cultures’ ongoing struggles against patriarchy, colonialism and racism.
At the end of the 18th century, hundreds of Indian sailors, known as lascars, worked amongst European settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand - often under the gruesome working conditions of seal hunting gangs. The story follows a lascar, Dasa, who has been abandoned on the coast of Aotearoa NZ by the East India Company, alongside his sealing gang. When Dasa finds himself in the middle of a conflict between his abusive British superior and two Māori traders, he is faced with a choice: bend the knee or take a stand.
Eight Pan-Asian female filmmakers’ powerful anthology film illuminates the immigrant experience in Aotearoa New Zealand through the lives of eight Asian women connected by the house they call home.
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.
When estranged son, Tai, is called home to Aotearoa to his father Putty's deathbed, he is forced to confront a painful past after years of avoiding it. Once inseparable, Tai and Putty would spend hours together fishing and joking around. However, after a family secret is revealed, their relationship falls apart.
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.
BEYOND CONVERSION is a deep-dive into conversion therapy in Aotearoa through the eyes of Kiwi conversion therapy survivors.
Thick, deadly smog blankets the globe, reducing visibility to less than a few metres. In a secluded farmhouse, a woman and her overbearing husband attempt to find resources and survive using a series of walking trails crafted from ropes and stakes. One night, the woman is alerted to the presence of someone or something else deep in the smog. Desperate to escape the farmhouse, the woman attempts to meet the unknown and risk everything to leave her loveless and abusive relationship behind.
Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.
Delegates and workers discuss the issues that effect the Timberworkers’ Union, the reasons for the formation of the Combined Council of Timber Workers Delegates (CCD) and their industrial action.
On the wild west coast of Auckland in New Zealand we follow one man's enforced isolation. Pacing the beach, he wonders if those dear to him will ever be seen again.
An airplane lands. A massive cruise boat anchors off the reef, disgorging tourists for tropical island vacations. This postcard paradise depends on petroleum imports to fuel its cars, motorbikes, boats, hotels, pumps and machinery. Yet if the tourists stopped coming, what then? The film opens with the prophetic words of Niuean artist John Pule and continues as a visual tone poem, without dialogue or narration, moving forward into the past to ask questions about the future. A young man travels back in time, from luxury resorts and lagoon tours through pandemic and population exodus, to early Christianity when missionaries incinerated his island’s atua and marae. Finally he reconnects with his tīpuna who settled the island a thousand years ago.
Based on the treatment of Pacific Island families during the New Zealand Dawn Raids of the 1970’s, this short is an intimate look into a police raid, as told through the eyes of a young girl Losa and her father Lupematasila.
Aroha wants to share her creativity with her neighbours. Her imaginations come to life for everyone to enjoy.