New Zealand's first talkies

"For several decades, the New Zealand film industry was so dependent on Hollywood and Britain for its movies that the work of New Zealand pioneer film-makers became virtually forgotten. Film historians have shown in recent years that quite a number of film makers, some of them professional, were active in this country, but research tended to concentrate on the North Island. ... Simon Price ... came to the conclusion that two of them, Henry Gore and Jack Welsh, deserved to be more widely hnoured for their achievements, and New Zealanders should be more aware that the first three feature-length talkies ever made in this country were devised and filmed in Otago and Southland. In this book, [Price] traces the development of the film industry in the two southern provinces from the first cinematographic showings in Dunedin in 1896 to the filming of Down on the Farm on the Taieri [Plains] in 1934-35 and the two further films that followed."--Back cover.