'Weddings & Women' brings together an exhibition about weddings and a screening about women, inspired by observing the upsurge in fashionability of marriage in recent years, and the public interest in the recent Royal nuptials of Kate and William, the exhibition makes the most of the Archive's extensive moving image collections, including a wealth of personal home movies, spanning over 80 years, representing usually beautiful and often fairytale like footage recording that personal, yet public, event of the wedding day.
To act as a counterbalance to these visions of white frocks and ceremony the Film Archive is holding a special evening presentation of New Zealand's earliest two feminist documentaries: 'Some of My Best Friends Are Women' (1975) and 'I Want To Be Joan'(1977). Both these films reflect the beginnings of feminist consciousness raising for women in this country.
'Weddings & Women' offers an intimate collection of home movie footage celebrating the venerated and fraught social institution of marriage, while the documentary screenings offer an alternative voice to the experience of the wedding. Sometimes formal and nervous, sometimes relaxed and irreverent, these presentations offers a visual articulation of the many approaches to what many consider the cornerstone of society.
Documentary Screening: Wednesday 15 June 6pm for 6.30pm start.
Exhibition: 8 June - 2 July 2011
Where: The Film Archive, L1/300 Karangahape Road, Newton, Auckland