Vanguard Films

Cabbie-turned-chauffeur Jimmy Tong learns there is really only one rule when you work for playboy millionaire Clark Devlin : Never touch Devlin's prized tuxedo. But when Devlin is temporarily put out of commission in an explosive accident, Jimmy puts on the tux and soon discovers that this extraordinary suit may be more black belt than black tie. Paired with a partner as inexperienced as he is, Jimmy becomes an unwitting secret agent.

Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Lhasa, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.

Sal Paradise is a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou. Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of “it” -- the pure essence of experience.

The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The stage version presents a school uprising similar to the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. A narrator introduces several characters among them the school girl activist Sarafina. Things get out of control when a policeman shoots several pupils in a classroom. Nevertheless, the musical ends with a cheerful farewell show of pupils leaving school, which takes most of act two. In the movie version Sarafina feels shame at her mother's (played by Miriam Makeba in the film) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film version) is imprisoned.

A stage presentation of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". The Steppenwolf Theater Company's production featuring the original Broadway cast. Desperately proud, but reduced to poverty by the loss of their farm, the Joads pile their few possessions on a battered old truck and head west for California, hoping to find work and a better life. Led by the indomitable Ma Joad, who is determined to keep the family together at any cost, and by the volatile young Tom Joad, an ex-convict who grows increasingly impatient with the intolerance and exploitation that they encounter on their trek, the Joads must deal with death and terrible deprivation before reaching their destination—where their waning hopes are dealt a final blow by the stark realities of the Great Depression.

The 'stolen' insider emails that informed Nicky Hager's best-selling account of National's 2005 election campaign return in Alister Barry's (Someone Else's Country) new film - just in time to caution us against campaigning politicians in 2008. Addressing each other like schoolboy Machiavellis, party leader Don Brash and his advisors spelled out how they'd copy the big boys in Australia and the US in order to win the votes of people who'd never support the kind of policies such men are widely presumed to represent. The dividing and conquering began at Orewa.

A Century of Struggle chronicles the hundred-year history of the NZ Seamen’s Union from its formation in 1879. Using original film and archive footage, it examines the working lives of seamen and the battles fought by their union from the sailing ships of colonial days to the modern turbine-powered container vessels. Because the Seamen’s Union was frequently at the forefront of working-class struggle in New Zealand, its story involves most of the crucial issues and events in the history of the union movement generally, including the great maritime strikes of 1890 and 1913 and the waterfront dispute of 1951.

Filmed in a village of the indigenous Mandaya people, located in a mountainous area of southeastern Mindanao, the country's second largest island, the documentary portrays the struggle of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People's Army, for the rights of indigenous Filipino peoples and the environment, which are constantly under threat from landowners, large logging companies and agribusiness.

A documentary exploring the battle over public education in New Zealand from the 1980s through the 1990s

Someone Else’s Country looks critically at the radical economic changes implemented by the 1984 Labour Government - where privatisation of state assets was part of a wider agenda that sought to remake New Zealand as a model free market state. The trickle-down ‘Rogernomics’ rhetoric warned of no gain without pain, and here the theory is counterpointed by the social effects (redundant workers, Post Office closures). Made by Alister Barry in 1996 when the effects were raw, the film draws extensively on archive footage and interviews with key “witnesses to history”.