In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leader, using a variety of tools from saw teeth to arrow heads. The first version of the film won a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival Held in Brussels in 1958 in association with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece".

Recluse Smith is drawn into a revolutionary struggle between guerrillas and right-wingers in New Zealand. Implicated in a murder and framed as a revolutionary conspirator, Smith tries to maintain an attitude of non-violence while caught between warring factions.

Gerry hires a car in Kaitaia with a stolen licence and travels to Invercargill with John, whose wife has just left him. The ultimate New Zealand road trip adventure.

Al Shaw's life revolves around motor racing and his back country junkyard, the "Smash Palace". His French wife, Jacqui, doesn't appreciate the lack of attention due to Al's obsession with cars. When Al finds her in the arms of another man, he takes his daughter, Georgie and heads for the bush, desperately hoping to hold on to the only family he has left.

On Christmas Eve, a nameless little girl reads 'The Monster's Christmas' storybook to her teddy bear, as something sneaks around in the trees outside her window. She hears a noise in the other room, and thinking that it's Father Christmas, she goes to investigate. She finds one of the monsters, who has come seeking help to defeat an evil witch that has stolen all the monsters' voices.

The same night as a girl is slain in the woods, the teenagers Sam and Les are robbed of all of their hard earned hens. In the quest for their hens they cross the murderer's path.

Two brothers take their father into the city for the weekend for a rugby game and a night on the town. However, the old man dies in their hotel and the boys need to smuggle his body back to their farm and make it appear that he died there to satisfy a clause in his will or else they won't inherit the property.

In 1981, the New Zealand government invited the South African rugby team to tour New Zealand. This effectively split the country in half. Patu! is the story of the protest movement, HART (halt all racist tours). This documentary shows footage of protester meetings, rugby games and various beatings meted out to protesters from police.

Anthropologist Max Scarry mysteriously disappears while doing excavation/research of a lost New Zealand tribe on a remote island. His wife and his twin brother Edward are clueless as to what could have happened, a situation complicated by their city's police suspecting that one of the brothers murdered a local prostitute who was found with a strange tribal charm on her body matching one found in Max's abandoned hut. What most certainly isn't helping matters is the strange behavior of Max's daughter as she seems to have visions beyond possibility, warnings of a supernatural threat and her uncle's fate - and she's the film's narrator, to boot. Edward decides to go to the island to find out exactly what happened, but the deeper he goes into the mystery the more perilous and unknowable his world becomes, leading towards a shocking fate that raises more questions than it answers. (cont. http://view-from-the-paperhouse.blogspot.de/2014/10/the-threat-of-ancient-echoes-lost-tribe.html)

In New Zealand in the 1860s the native Maori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the British until betrayal leads him to seek utu (revenge). The settler Williamson in turn seeks revenge after Te Wheke attacks his homestead. Meanwhile Wiremu, an officer for the British, seems to think that resistance is futile.

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 countryside.

Three orphaned boys - O'Malley, Rossi and Moir - become blood brothers. When they grow up, they plot revenge on the crooks who got away with shooting O'Malley's father. The crooks are doing very nicely importing heroin and laundering money. The boys begin by killing one of the crooks, stealing his indentification and cleaning out the guy's Swiss bank account. But their revenge does not stop here... And the American end of the operation is getting very curious.

A kid is hypnotized by a scientist to kill his parents and ends in a mental institution. As a grown up he returns to seek revenge over the scientist.

On November 18 1982, a 22-year old Aucklander, Neil Roberts, daubed a washroom wall with the graffiti slogan: ‘WE HAVE MAINTAINED A SILENCE CLOSELY RESEMBLING STUPIDITY’. He then placed a bomb outside the State Security Computer Centre at Whanganui where files are kept on all citizens. The bomb blew him to pieces.

A small town woman, fresh to the city, buys a used Jaguar haunted by the ghost of a woman who was slain in it.

Monica arrives back from her big overseas experience to find her boyfriend Nick unchanged. Although Nick styles himself an artist, he is really something of a cultural redneck, and when the couple head up north for a break, and they meet up with Riki, a poet, who is rather less shallow and charming.

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.

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 has Māori heritage; and the fight to keep the local freezing works open.

During the Great Depression, Kate (Greer Robson) is a 13-year-old girl living on New Zealand's South Island. When her mother dies and her father is offered a job in Wellington on North Island, Kate is sent to live with an aunt. The girl runs away to find her father, hopping onto a boxcar and befriending a fellow fugitive, Patrick (Peter Phelps), an emotionally battle-scarred WWI veteran fleeing the authorities after injuring a repo man. Pretending to be father and daughter, Patrick and Kate use each other for cover as they make their way across New Zealand, sleeping under the stars and championing the rights of destitute farmers and homeless squatters whose fortunes have been wiped out by economic hardship.

A team from the intergalactic fast food chain Crumb's Crunchy Delights descends on Earth, planning to make human flesh the newest taste sensation. After they wipe out the New Zealand town Kaihoro, the country’s Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIaDS) is called in to deal with the problem. Things are complicated due to Giles, an aid worker who comes to Kaihoro the same day to collect change from the residents. He is captured by the aliens, and AIaDS stages a rescue mission that quickly becomes an all-out assault on the aliens’ headquarters.