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Pop CultureAugust 5, 2016

Miracle: Here are 10 local documentaries you can watch in 30 minutes

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Alex Casey snacks on this year’s Loading Docs selection, ten locally-made documentaries under 3 minutes in length.

Love documentaries but hate all the sitting, watching and listening? Destined to take 100 pee breaks and snack stops during the average 90 minute runtime? Fear not my fellow cinema pests, Loading Docs is the perfect solution if your love for factual content is only outweighed by your piddly attention span.

Founded by Julia Parnell and Anna Jackson, the NZ On Air funded initiative produces a selection of 3 minute documentaries that aim to showcase local stories and promote our brightest new filmmakers. The theme for this year’s crop is ‘change’, presenting true stories of transformation, growth, adversity and hope. I binged them all in an easy breezy half hour to assemble this handy, one-sentence guide. Snack away.

How Mr and Mrs Gock Saved the Kumara (dir. Felicity Morgan-Rhind)

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A delightful sing-song Seussian tale of the Gock family, a couple of unsung national heroes who breathed new life into New Zealand’s finest root vegetable.

Bludgeon (dir. Ryan Heron and Andy Deere)

When I pick up a weapon, I become a weapon

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Martainn of the Steel Thorns, a mighty force in the world of medieval combat, prepares for battle in this fascinating insight into roleplaying sport.

Mister Sunshine (dir. Eldon Booth)

Money don’t make you happy, it just gives a better level of unhappiness

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Another local legend, a millionaire turned snazzy Auckland shoeshine king muses on life, happiness and just being nice.

Same but Different (dir. Louise Leitch)

We’ve done a lot as two men together, but I’m not a man anymore

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A moving, honest examination of an evolving friendship between two men as one of them transitions into being a woman.

Street Smart (dir. Leigh Minarapa)

Acknowledge me

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Arriving with eerie timing given the current crisis, Street Smart takes us inside the reality of rough sleeping in Auckland’s CBD.

Blood Sugar (dir. Joe Hitchcock)

When you die, you don’t do anything. When you’re alive, you play

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The world’s cutest four year-old fairy queen flits through a life of type one diabetes, starfish and pesky needles.

‘Aka’ōu: Tātatau in the Cook Islands (dir. Robert George)

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English rose Croc Coulter is an unlikely master of traditional Cook Island tattoo, follow him as he passes on the skills to ensure the practice remains in safe hands.

Imagine the World is Ending (dir. Brendan Withy) 

As the apocalypse causes the ground to break away, we’ll begin to understand the real issues

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Two rhyming schoolkids spit out some much-needed perspective in the only selfie stick video the world needs right now.

Water for Gold (dir. Rose Archer)

It’s a real problem, it’s a dodgy system

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With this bold activist animation breathing a very scary thing to life, Professor Jane Kelsey weighs in on the perils of the TPPA.

The Colourist (dir. Greg Wood, Peter Alsop)

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World’s sweetest woman Grace Rawson recalls being a colourist for Whites aviation in the 1950s, among a slew of other uncredited young women who loaned their skills to these iconic images.


Click here to watch the full Loading Docs collection on TVNZ On Demand

This television content is brought to you by our sponsors at Lightbox. If you are a fan of short things, may we suggest clicking below to watch their collection of short local films in the Show Me Shorts collection:

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Keep going!