Lisa Chappell

A newly married detective and his pregnant wife move into their dream home unaware of its dark history. When his wife claims their baby is being tormented by a supernatural force and seeks the help of a renegade demonologist, he must investigate the past to save his family.

The true story of Jean Batten is of a daughter determined to live up to a powerful mother, desperate to leave a mark on the world – and prepared to go to the ends of the earth to do so. This is the story of JEAN.

On the 7th of May 2009, Senior Constables Len Snee, Grant Diver and Bruce Miller arrived at 41 Chaucer Rd in Napier to serve a search warrant on Jan Molenaar for the growing of cannabis. This was just a routine warrant, something they had done countless times. What was meant to be an ordinary procedure turned into three of New Zealand’s darkest days and ended with one police officer dead, two officers critically injured and a member of the public fighting for his life. In some fifty hours Jan Molenaar made a permanent and devastating imprint upon the national psyche of New Zealand as he changed the lives of individuals, families, a police community, and a city. The siege was one of the worst and unexpected cases of violence both Napier and New Zealand had witnessed and it was all the more shocking because of its ordinary suburban backdrop.

A woman unable to conceive a child with her husband, despite years of trying, makes the drunken mistake of sleeping with a young stranger. The stranger then goes to terrifying lengths to prove his paternity.

In Crossbow the spoiler is right in front of you, there in the title. A crossbow is an anachronistic device and does not, at least in my mind, lend itself well to analogy or metaphor. In spite, or, more accurately, precisely because this ominous title hangs over the very start of viewing, the short film remarkably sustains a growing dread throughout its languid narration and slow-moving, though arresting visuals; maximizing its force not through the promise of surprise but through the inevitability of its conclusion.

Chrissy and Jo attend Chrissy's university reunion. Surrounded by success, Chrissy begins to question her decision to stay at home with the kids. When an old friend's husband is found dead in the harbour from an apparent heart attack, Chrissy and Jo are drawn to solve the mystery after learning the dead man's blood contained Ketamine, an animal tranquilliser used as a party drug.

A thousand years ago, in England, the crazy monk Elmer wears a pair of wings and tries to fly from a high tower. He dies, and his soul is doomed to the eternity in hell for committing suicide. In the present days, in New Zeland, Elmer has the last chance to prove that men can fly and save his soul: his spirit enters in the brain of a very intelligent inventor, Jack Brown, and forces him to try to fly. Jack uses his last creation, an amplifier in a tape record, to succeed in the journey, but his invention is strongly desired by his former boss and his lover, who want to sell it to a Chinese investor. Jack's girlfriend helps him to accomplish his intent.

In a town called Hope on the edge of Britain's empire, desperations clash: the beautiful Dorothea Brook is desperate to free her pregnant sister Rose from the clutches of Fraser, a fortune hunter. A local politician, William Poyner, is desperate for cash and thinks marriage to Dorothea will save him. Dorothea hires Lawrence Hayes, a rough but handsome Argonaut, to bribe Fraser with jewels and to marry Rose; Hayes desperately loves Dorothea and may marry Rose to stay close to her. But Dorothea has a lover, the ravishing Anne Cooper, who encourages the match with Poyser to give the lovers cover. Are these remedies, each desperate in its turn, going to make anyone happy?