Transnational Film Culture in New Zealand is a niche publication, written because its author loves film.  Film was the most important medium of the 20th century, Simon Sigley says, “a protean cultural phenomenon with huge industrial and aesthetic ramifications”, and he is fascinated by its changing cultural status in his native New Zealand, the more so because for around a decade he lived in a country where film has always been given its intellectual due: France.  A film viewed in the cinema, the environment for which it was crafted – is special. Nothing, says Sigley, compares with that visceral, embodied experience of cinema, that moment when lights dim, the chatter stops, the sound swells and the movie begins.

See more at: http://definingnz.com/cinephile/#sthash.JavN9hOg.dpuf