This promotional travelogue, made for the Christchurch City Council, shows off the city and its environs. Filmed at a time when New Zealand’s post-war economy was booming as it continued its role as a farmyard for the “Old Country”, it depicts Christchurch as a prosperous city, confident in its green and pleasant self-image as a “better Britain” (as James Belich coined NZ’s relationship to England), and architecturally dominated by its cathedrals, churches and schools. Many of these buildings were severely damaged or destroyed in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.
Bordeaux-Paris was the best bike race you’ve never heard of: a midnight start, 550km-long, and ridden behind motorised ‘dernys’, with winners including Jacques Anquetil and Tom Simpson.
The remote island of St. Helena, a British possession located in the south Atlantic, is perhaps best known as where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled/imprisoned for the final six years of his life and where he died in 1821.
Documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown, himself a competition-level surfer, follows surfers Michael Hynson and Robert August on an around-the-world surfing adventure.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are 2 islands inextricably linked by their huge neighbour. Modern metropolises full of eastern traditions, they're forging forward in the 21st century as China's little dragons.
How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.
Canada, rich in uranium, is harnessing atomic science for peacetime living. This film provides a progress report on nuclear research conducted at the atomic energy plant at Chalk River, Ontario, and shows some of the constructive applications of atomic energy carried out in hospitals (including Canada's celebrated "cobalt bomb"), in agricultural experimental stations and in industry.
When his grandfather dies, George Westcott (Patrick Doonan) returns home from India to collect his inheritance -- only to find that the will has mysteriously gone missing.
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
