Games '74: Official Film of the Xth British Commonwealth Games, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1974
This chronicle of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games marked one of the National Film Unit's most ambitious productions. Though a range of events (including famous runs by John Walker and Dick Tayler), are covered, the film often bypasses the pomp and glory approach; instead it dares to talk to the injured and mention that most competitors lose. The closing ceremonies of the "friendly games" feature the athletes gathering to — as the official song's chorus put it — "join together". Four directors joined together to work on it: Arthur Everard, John King, Paul Maunder and Sam Pillsbury.
The South Island by Coach
From Christchurch, a coach load of visitors tour the southern part of the South Island, visiting the Hermitage Hotel at Mount Cook, Queenstown and district, the Eglinton Valley, Milford Sound, and Dunedin. Also catalogued as 'South Island Coach Tour'.
Weekly Review No. 169 - New Zealand Soldiers and Polish Children
This 1944 newsreel documents arrivals at a Wellington wharf from the Middle East: New Zealand soldiers and Polish children. For the refugees it was the conclusion of an epic wartime survival tale: an exodus from Poland via Siberian labour camps, to being greeted by Prime Minister Peter Fraser in NZ. The Poles then take the train past waving crowds to their new home: a camp in Pahīatua. Twenty years later the children were revisited in Kathleen O’Brien’s classic 1966 documentary The Story of Seven-Hundred Polish Children.