Kiwi's in the world

Just back from Berkley having attended the Launch of Peter Limbrick's Making Settler Cinemas.  Peter's a kiwi, a colleague of Irene's at UC Santa Cruz and is a Dunedinite.  What can I say, small world!  He read excerpts from his book where he shared some fab stories about how the making of films in small town NZ (Whakatane being one) in the 1930s-1950s impacted those communities.  Not that that is the focus of his book but it provided a lovely context for what the publishers describe as:
"In Making Settler Cinemas, Peter Limbrick argues that the United States, Australia, and New Zealand share histories of colonial encounters that have shaped their cinemas in distinctive ways. Going beyond readings of narrative and representation, this book studies the production, distribution, reception, and reexhibition of cinema across three settler societies under the sway of two empires. Investigating films both canonical and overlooked, Making Settler Cinemas not only shows how cinema has mattered to settler societies but affirms that practices of film history can themselves be instrumental in encountering and reshaping colonial pasts."
Delightful, smart guy.....