Senior writer Alex Casey has a long history with cinema, both as a reviewer and as a former projectionist. This week she wrote two film-adjacent features.

The first had Alex travel to Akaroa to speak to the people running a bustling local cinema and then go down a rabbit hole of South Island cinemas holding on to the movies as a third space. And the second is just a fun appreciation of our strangely high proportion of successful child actors, and what makes it possible to succeed here at 11 years old.

She appeared on Behind the Story to talk local reporting, the magic of movies and the very best of our child actors.

The small town cinemas holding on at the edge of the world

How does New Zealand produce so many successful child actors?

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