Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Stephen Garner who works at Laidlaw College in New Zealand as Academic Dean and Senior Lecturer in Theology. He talks about how the seasons are different between our two countries, and how Christmas, and its attendant nostalgia, fits into this framework. He once celebrated his birthday twice in one year. Stephen works in the areas of technology/new media and bioethics/transhumanism as well as religion and popular culture. He tells us about his interest in collecting film resources – such as by rummaging around second hand stores – from the Pacific, foundational to New Zealand cinema, which are increasingly unavailable. So, he is accumulating physical media that is disappearing from physical memory and has up to 1500 DVDs. We discuss the differences in curating our own movie collection when we are dealing with physical products and how it can’t happen in the same way in a streaming context. The packaging also tells a story of a particular time. Stephen also reflects on the importanc