The Footstep Man

This documentary looks at the life and work of New Zealand's most celebrated painter, Colin McCahon. The first excerpt looks at McCahon's beginnings in Timaru and Dunedin, and his explorations of modernist techniques in paintings that reconceived 'the promised land' in an endemic landscape. The second excerpt covers McCahon's time in Muriwai in the 60s and 70s, and the influence of the environment and Māori spirituality on his work. Sam Neill reads from McCahon's letters and writings. Directed by Paul Swadel, it won Best Documentary at the 2005 Qantas Awards.

A Polynesian street-kid and a much older middle-class housewife are both incarcerated in the same mental hospital - she for attempted suicide and he for habitual crime. A friendship grows between them such that she offers him a place to stay upon his release. However, difficulties arise with his continued criminal activities and dependence on her for support - then his gang moves in with them. The film is based upon Sue McCauley's award winning autobiographical novel.

Ruby, an 83 year old trying to dodge a retirement home, rents a room to Rata, a solo mum with sidelines in music and benefit fraud. Rata's son is into arson and shoplifting, while Ruby's nephew is a hapless yuppie wannabe. Marginalised by the deregulated economy of the '80s and living on their wits, they may just find common cause despite themselves.

Set in Edwardian England where upper lips are always stiff and men from the Colonies are not entirely to be trusted, Fisk Senior has little time or affection for his son, but when the pair visit an eccentric Indian, they start a strange journey that eventually allows the old man to find his heart.

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Māori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.

The Orator (O Le Tulafale) is a contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness and love. Small in stature and humble, Saili lives a simple life with his beloved wife and daughter in an isolated, traditional village in the islands of Samoa. Forced to protect his land and family, Saili must face his fears and seek the right to speak up for those he loves.

Billy (Cliff Curtis) is trying to organize the biggest celebration the town of Waimatua has even seen - the 75th Jubilee of their school. In doing this, feckless Billy is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his family, especially his frustrated wife Pauline (Theresa Healey). However trouble arrives with the return of a local former All Blacks Captain, an old flame of Pauline's.

In Rain of the Children, Ward further explores the subject of his earlier film, In Spring One Plants Alone when, as a young film student he travelled to the Ureweras and documented the lives of an elderly Māori woman (Puhi) and her schizophrenic son (Niki).

A matriarch organizes a feast with her family, in which she will name her successor. The heart has gone out of Nanna Maria's family. There are no parties — they don't even fight anymore...

The father of a deeply troubled household that endured tragedy both from without and within, seeks to reconcile with his youngest daughter by making a journey to both symbolically and culturally lay the family "ghosts" to rest.

Hongi, a Maori chieftain’s teenage son, must avenge his father’s murder in order to bring peace and honour to the souls of his loved ones after his tribe is slaughtered through an act of treachery. Vastly outnumbered by a band of villains led by Wirepa, Hongi’s only hope is to pass through the feared and forbidden “Dead Lands” and forge an uneasy alliance with a mysterious warrior, a ruthless fighter who has ruled the area for years.

This is the story of Puhi, an aged Maori woman and Niki, her fully grown but wholly dependent son. The world they occupy is not a world of large events but the rituals of everyday life, traditions and interdependence. “In Spring One Plants Alone” documents the minutiae of their very enclosed existence. Filmed over a period of one and a half years, it emerges as a rare, haunting and powerful portrayal of their life together. This is the story of their rituals and of their survival. The small and disconnected instances that we encounter form a lone vision of the rifts and the bond between an old woman and her disturbed son.

Lucinda lives a fairytale life with dairy farmer Rob, and his 117 cows. But after a freak car accident she decides to test Rob's love for her by trying to make him angry. He passes her tests until a quilt goes missing from their bed and the price of getting it back is high.

In a town called Hope on the edge of Britain's empire, desperations clash: the beautiful Dorothea Brook is desperate to free her pregnant sister Rose from the clutches of Fraser, a fortune hunter. A local politician, William Poyner, is desperate for cash and thinks marriage to Dorothea will save him. Dorothea hires Lawrence Hayes, a rough but handsome Argonaut, to bribe Fraser with jewels and to marry Rose; Hayes desperately loves Dorothea and may marry Rose to stay close to her. But Dorothea has a lover, the ravishing Anne Cooper, who encourages the match with Poyser to give the lovers cover. Are these remedies, each desperate in its turn, going to make anyone happy?

The vampire myth is given a stylish 1960s treatment, where a human cop partners with a vampire cop to stop a vamp bent on creating a war between the two "separate but equal" races.

Richard, an astronomy-obsessed worrier spends his time fantasizing about outer-space and the cosmos, an activity which antagonizes friends and family. One day, he meets Johnny, a handsome Italian man, with an enormous appetite for life, whose idea of a holiday involves breaking into the nearest small holiday home. He offers him love and an escape from the monotony of work.