Toa Fraser
Freedom is defined as the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity. To reach that level of liberty is a physical and mental endeavor that many will risk their life to obtain. Is life worth risking for the feeling of conquering fear and becoming free? Olympic Freestyle skier, Jossi Wells, meets extreme sports performing artists, The Flying Frenchies, to find out what it really means to be free and what drives individuals to chase such a powerful right. Directed by Toa Fraser, this is the story of men who push themselves to the point of no return. There is no going back when death is at your door and you realize that this is the most important moment of your life because it could be your very last.
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.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s superb, universally acclaimed production of Giselle has now been made into a superb film. Director Toa Fraser, producer Matthew Metcalfe, cinematographer Leon Narbey and editor Dan Kircher have worked intensively with the company to ensure that this film version works wonders in its own right. First performed in Paris in 1841 and based on a poem by Heinrich Heine, Giselle is a quintessential artefact of 19th-century European Romanticism, a brooding two-act drama in which eroticism and death each claims its act.
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.
An intimate story set during the 1860s in which a young Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonization of New Zealand.
