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Bread and Roses

Television (Excerpts) – 1993

This acclaimed drama chronicles romance, hospitalisation and rebirth, as it follows formative decades in the life of trade unionist, politician and feminist Sonja Davies. Although director Gaylene Preston and co-writer Graeme Tetley's three-hour production was made for television, it won a limited cinema release on both sides of the Tasman. Australian Geneviève Picot (as Davies) and Mick Rose (as her husband) won acting gongs at the 1994 NZ Film and TV Awards. This excerpt features Sonja discovering the power of protest in the 1950s. Bread and Roses marked 100 years of women's suffrage in Aotearoa. Read more about it here.

Bread and Roses is Preston/Laing's best work yet and ... a wonderful suffrage year tribute to the women of New Zealand.
– Reviewer Helen Martin in Illusions Magazine, 1994

Produced by

Preston*Laing Productions

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