And in other news, a little movie about my neck of the woods in New Zealand is in theaters. An gold mining company ( american company which is a total bummer) who have a permit to dig an open cast mine in the Coromandel hills, swaggers into the laidback beach community of Kuaotunu ( where my beach house is ) , promising 400 jobs and plenty of money for all if gold is extracted. Many of the locals, however, are not impressed with these airy assurances, believing the environmental threat to their beautiful, sleepy backwater to be far more serious and longlasting than anyone is admitting. The resulting confrontation, which was to drag on for 15 years, has become the basis for a low budget feature film, The Z-Nail Gang – made for $30,000 and a huge amount of goodwill and donated services. A local mother and a surfer are at the centre of the protest – lobbying, writing letters, raising money, contacting newspapers. “At any time, money and power can arrive on your doorstep, put dark forces into play and try to take everything you have. We were standing for our home and our lives, we had to fight and we had to win, or we would lose everything.” Moral of the story ... do not piss off A Kiwi Mother or A Kiwi Surfers.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 07:29:00 +0000
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