Next on 1News’ Small Town series tour, Jared McCulloch visits the idyllic South Island town of Roxburgh.
The Central Otago town of Roxburgh is nestled on the banks of the mighty Clutha River and is known for stone fruit and Jimmy's Pies - but that's not all.
It's home to the country's longest continuously running movie theatre on the same site.
The first cinematographe played at the Roxburgh Athenaeum Hall on 11 December 1897 - now the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre.
With a population that's just shy of 600, the movie theatre has enough seats to house nearly half the town.
But what makes the complex special, is the whole cinema operation is run by volunteers.
Around 30 people at a time pitch in to make sure the pictures play, at least two times a week.
Norman Dalley works as treasurer for the cinema group and has not long joined.
"I'm not a moviegoer believe it or not!"
But this year is extra special - the town is about to celebrate 125 years of showing moving pictures.
"We've come to understand that the movies have been continuously shown from this site since 1897."
Kristen May is a volunteer. She's been researching the history of the complex "for about nine or ten years now".
They've just found out their only short of a world record.
"Unfortunately we tried to go for the Guinness World Record but we missed out on that by seven months to the Washington Iowa State Cinema in America."
"Damn it!" she laughed.
Then there's Doug Dance. He started helping as an assistant projectionist when he was just 13 - back in 1954."
Doug knows the place inside out.
"[The first operators] had projectors that you'd go through country areas showing movies, nobody had fixed projectors."
Committee member, Annie Kennedy, was taken a back when she found out the Lumiere Brothers first commercial film had just come out in Paris two years earlier.
"Doesn't that just blow you away how quickly across the globe that technology managed to find its way to Roxburgh!"
The cinema building has had a few upgrades, when the hall was moved in 1931.
Doug told 1News, "There were four traction engines and got towed around the back and it's incorporated into this building around the back...they bought two new projectors and boom they were away again."
The cinema's glory days came in the 1950s.
"The Roxburgh Dam was right in its hay day... they use to run the buses down here, this was a huge place."
By the 1970s the commercial operation of the cinema was handed over to the local community, with volunteers running it and preserving it ever since for future generations to enjoy.
Now it's a labour of love for those involved.
Norman said, "We run the cinema operation on a weekly basis showing two movies a week, every week, sometimes we have no people come along, other times we have a house-full."
Every dollar raised goes back into the complex.
"We are starting to look at systems, like a stage mic systems, new sound system, new seating in the building so that's the targets we've got for the near future to keep the place alive."
The locals determined to keep the lights on and pictures rolling for at least another century.
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