NZIFF: Bread and Roses

A late addition to the Hawke's Bay NZIFF programme at MTG is the wonderful 'Bread and Roses' by local legend Gaylene Preston. Following the screening Gaylene, originally from Napier, will be present for a Q&A session in the theatre. 

Preston-Laing’s film adaptation of Sonja Davies’ autobiography beautifully captures the heart-breaking social and societal conditions of mid-century women in New Zealand. 

Whanau Marama is delighted to present a new restoration of Gaylene Preston’s brilliant long-form biographical drama, originally presented in the 1993 festivals. This is the complete restoration of an iconic film - the restoration was a painstaking labour of love by Gaylene and included completely remaking the sound. 

Preston’s superb adaptation of Sonja Davies’ autobiography will ring resoundingly true for many New Zealanders. Much of its sharp eye for social history belongs to the women at its centre. An illegitimate child, the Davies of Preston’s film grew up with the middle class, but not of it, a watchful outsider looking for a safe haven. In Genevieve Picot’s lucid and moving performance, the young Davies’ pride in her own self-worth is never in doubt, but just how she is to live up to it is much less clear. Her outspoken recognition of the pressures wartime society places on women not only irritates her peers: it also fails to exempt her from the harsh experiences undergone by so many others.