New Year honour: Napier's godfather of film Peter Goodbehere honoured

Let the credits roll, because Peter Goodbehere, the godfather of Hawke's Bay film, now has a Queen's Service Medal.

The 83-year-old founding member of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies' (NZFFS) Napier branch and the man behind Napier's Century Cinema has been given the New Year honour for services to film.

Goodbehere has had an extensive career in the film industry with various founding and leadership roles, all sparked by a personal love of film and cinema.

His career in the industry began when he started work in Wellington for the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and was persuaded to join the Wellington film society within a few weeks.

Peter Goodbehere from Napier is being honoured at the New Year Honours for services to film. Photo / Warren Buckland

When he was transferred to Napier, there was no film society, so he and a group of like-minded film buffs set one up in 1959.

Two years later he was elected president of the society and held the position until it ended in 2002.

Later when he was elected to the NZFFS board, he also had the job of checking new films as they came in, and repairing those that needed it.

Then while working in the Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery and writing film reviews for various publications, he found in a particular year there were about 80 films that had been reviewed in the publications that the Napier film society hadn't seen.

Over a conversation with the then museum director Roger Smith, he raised the idea of creating a cinema out of the existing theatre in the building.

Century Cinema was set up with a new screen and opened on May 3, 1990, and showed its first film, Crossing Delancey.

Goodbehere oversaw the cinema's growth from two screenings to more than 25 per week.

When asked what he has enjoyed most about his career, Goodbehere simply says "watching films".

He was a film lover years before his first brush with a film society in Wellington, still remembering the first film he ever saw, 1942's Holiday Inn, which he watched during the war with his mother.

"I still remember the scene with the snow falling down outside the windows then Bing Crosby singing White Christmas.

"I have a DVD of it now."

After the war he would go for holidays at his grandparents in Feilding, watching a film at one of the two cinemas each time.

As a pupil at Kimbolton School, the school fundraised to buy a film projector, one of the first country schools to have one, which enabled him to learn the technical side.

He still goes to the cinema on average about once a week, generally choosing offbeat, foreign films, and the annual New Zealand International Film Festival.

As for his favourite film, it's the 1941 film Citizen Kane by Orson Welles.

"It's still thrilling to watch. So many things you see on television these days, the way they use the camera or the lighting, it was just new and well done.

"I have that on DVD too."

He says the medal comes as a "surprise" but is very "grateful" to be receiving it.

"When you're doing these things, you don't expect an award at the end."